wilhelm

Web browsers already have this, and it sucks. There's XML mode, HTML standards mode, HTML quirks mode and HTML almost standards mode. It's horrible to test and maintain.

You can still write the HTML5 vocabulary as XHTML if you really want to. That's perfectly valid, and defined in the spec.

The HTML5 parsing algorithm is what the browser vendors want and need, however. Since HTML was never specified properly - not even in HTML4, where large areas were just undefined - HTML parsers have slowly evolved through trial and error. If big sites depend on a particular behaviour in a particular browser, other browsers have tried to be bug-compatible with that browser. Browsers that failed to do so have lost market share. If a browser decided to halt on encountering anything invalid would lose all of its users instantly, since the vast majority of documents are invalid.

Parsers have slowly converged towards each other, and the HTML5 algorithm is the compromise between them that breaks the last amount of content.

In other words, the goal of the HTML5 parsing spec was never to make something nice and clean. The goal was to define how to parse the unholy mess all you web developers out there have created during the past two decades. A clear spec, a good test suite and exactly identical behaviour between browsers is a benefit for everyone.

What do you need the rest of the world for? Seriously - Croatia has four million people. Isn't there enough of a customer base locally? Build the best available product in your language, and you have purple cow.

This is of course completely subjective, but, from the top of my head:

Painful user interface. No good package management system. Instability and unreasonable hardware requirements for even simple tasks. Missing good command line tools and light-weight methods of remote administration, development and testing.

Quite the contrary. Having an education and relevant technical experience are all good, but what separates the merely good candidates from the excellent is that the latter have proven that they can get stuff done by their own initiative, that they've actually used their skills for something real.

Contributing to an open source project? Excellent. Writing your own research papers and contributing to a standards organization? Wonderful. Running your own business? Perfect.

Be where they are. Discuss with them. Exchange code with them. When you find the best, the ones you're interested in hiring, ask them to come work for you. I've hired a dozen excellent people to my department in the past couple of years. Only half of them have applied on their own without any prior interaction.

Indeed it does. Thanks a lot. I'll check out the names you mentioned. I don't have any volume yet, but I might find useful inspiration there. (c:

Thanks for your input!

No, I won't be storing card numbers. I'll just store a hash I can use to bill again. The PCI certification is cumbersome and costs money I don't have yet, and I'd really prefer if those numbers are on someone elses's server - just in case. (c:

Sure. wilhelm at e-tjenesten dot org. Note that I have no experience with webkit, but have worked for a direct competitor. The work should be very similar, though. (c:

I've worked with browser development and testing for the past six years. Each part of the development chain has its interesting parts. Getting the browser engine to work and giving it a usable UI for an exciting new platform is great fun. Working on the browser engine itself, taking part in developing the web standards of tomorrow and making the stuff hundred million people use every day, is even better.

Commenting on whether or not the particular position in question would be good fit for you is however impossible without knowing more about your background, what you like and what you'd be doing, however. Let me know if you have any more specific questions.

Let me tell you a bit about how this works on the other side of the fence. I'm 26, and for the past three years I've worked as department manager in a well-known Norwegian software company, responsible for hiring in my group. I've evaluated a thousand different candidates and hired about a dozen full-time employees from all over the world.

In the end, it doesn't matter who you are, where you're from or what education you have. The only things that matter are whether you're excellent at what you do, that you have proven that you're capable of getting stuff done and that you'd fit in with the rest of the team.

If you start your own business, none of this is relevant, of course. As long as you ship something a sufficient large number of people are willing to pay for, you're set.

But most people work for others, and you probably will too before you've gained a sufficient level of experience to do your own thing. To get a job in the industry, you'll have to prove all of the above, and sufficiently impress myself or my peers elsewhere in the industry to get your inside the door.

An education is a great asset to start with. That piece of paper proves that you have at least three years of experience working with relevant subjects. If you've spent your time well and got to know all the industrious people at your university, you might already know someone working where you're applying for a job. That often gets you to the interview.

But that piece of paper is far from enough. I need to see that you've done something with your life, that you've _created_ something. It doesn't matter if it's contributions to an open source project, running the servers of your student organization or building your own business on the side. Show me that you care, that you love what you're doing, that you're capable of getting stuff done. If the classes are easy, you'll have plenty of time to do other stuff I'm more impressed by.

But do not, under any circumstances, get crappy grades in subjects that are “too easy”. It is _not_ beneath you. You'll do boring and easy tasks even if you're a superstar, and that line of Cs on your transcript is a big, blinking warning sign I cannot ignore. If you don't care enough, you're better off without that piece of paper. Do your own thing, then, but you'll have to work twice as hard to prove yourself.

Not that it's impossible, of course. I have no education. Straight out of high school I applied for a five-week internship at my current company. I got good references from another employee, so I did get to the interview, and I did get the internship. And after eight days, I had a permanent job.

The pay was horrible, the work was - well, entry-level - but that was fine. As long as I could prove that I was great at what I was doing, I could advance. And so I did.

After two years I had the job I really wanted from the start. It was excellent. And after a few more months, I was promoted to be head of my department, despite being the youngest person on the team.

Three years later, my peers are finishing their degrees and applying for jobs. I'm very happy with my decisions so far in life, and think I've learned more this way than I would have done at a university. But I've had to work very hard to get here.