Mark Pilgrim on Joel Spolsky’s “Martian Headsets”

This appears to be the case with Mark Pilgrim's latest posts for some reason. See also: Pilgrim flipping the Bozo bit on Linus Torvalds:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/03/07/iphone-gpl#comme...

I think this is a case where I would use a down-vote on an article submission. It has nothing to do with being pro or anti microsoft. The submission is just feeble, ugly, immature, and a waste of our time.

First argument: This self-fulfilling prophecy has been brought to you by Google Adsense: funding Slashdot trolls since 2003.

What does this even mean? Does it have any substance?

Second argument: I demand documented standards with open reference implementations. That’s why I only develop with Microsoft technologies.

How does this counter the point that there is no reference implementation for web standards. What Joe did or did not do is completely irrelevant to the discussion as hand.

Third argument: No one has ever written tools to encapsulate the world’s collective understanding of standards; you must start from scratch like everybody else. Freedom 0 buys you nothing unless you can audit the source code yourself. “Faith” in science is no more well-founded than “faith” in religion unless you can personally reproduce the experiments.

This is the closest that the article comes to actually making a reasonable point. Even then, it doesn't go very far. Instead of clearly stating the point, the author just uses sarcasm. Sarcasm is very effective in arguments but only as support, not as the core.

Fourth argument: Hi, I’m Web Developer Barbie. Pull my string and I say, “Standards are tough! Let’s go shopping!”

This is ridiculous. Is there any evidence attached either way? At least Joe added an excerpt of a standards document. I have read standards documents before. I didn't find them illegible but reading them was a painful experience. It is not a very far leap to assume that there are many web developers who will not put in the time required to understand them completely.

Fifth argument: I have never heard of test suites.

Actually, Joe addressed this point specifically as follows: There is no practical way to check if the web page you just coded conforms to the spec. There are validators, but they won’t tell you what the page is supposed to look like, and having a “valid” page where all the text is overlapping and nothing lines up and you can’t see anything is not very useful. What people do is check their pages against one browser, maybe two, until it looks right. And if they’ve made a mistake that just happens to look OK in IE and Firefox, they’re not even going to know about it.

Sixth argument: I am high as a kite.

See arguments 1, 2, and 4.

Seventh argument: Wait… you mean you can… see what I’m typing?

See argument 6.

Eighth argument: Microsoft has always had the best interests of the web at heart. Microsoft has never encouraged web developers to use Microsoft-specific technologies. Microsoft has never shipped a browser that rendered pages differently than its predecessor and then let it stagnate for six years while the rest of the world moved on.

Yes, MS does have a jaded record when it comes to supporting standards. It may be entirely their fault that we have this standards mess with IE now. How does that have any bearing on Joe's prediction?

Ninth argument: I know IE is going to continue to lose a lot of market share, and I’m publishing this now so I can blame you dirty fucking hippies for it later.

This is ridiculous. Can we please have reasoned criticism where we do not resort to ad hominem attacks and/or act like 13 year olds?