The Underscore Archives

Tim Marsh wrote:
> really ? ..reflects badly on their developers?
> developer to developer its not pretty, but you show me a developer that
> hasnt delivered a site that they're not 100% happy with, and I'll show you
> someone who's either done one site, or who is buy me a lottery ticket please
> as you're bound to win it for me, lucky.
>
> sure its the ideal to get clean, compliant code that works.. but in the real
> world.. tis not always that easy , sometimes you have to take the technical
> debt [http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html] on the chin today
>  and then fix it tomorrow in order to deliver on time, other times you may
> be lucky enough to be able to deliver the perfect solution on time every
> time.
>
> I know its easy to criticise from the vacuum that is the 1% (a guess) of
> people who view source, and know enough to know better,  I'm sure I do it..
> but in this case..  reflects badly on the developer.. have to disagree on
> that one.
>   
>

As I put in my earlier post, I agree that the use of conditional 
comments here does not necessarily have an impact on the actual site 
visitor so perhaps it's a bit puritanical to view the source and object. 
I also understand that a 100% technically perfect site is not going to 
be realistic all the time. If the deadline is tight and / or the issue 
is a very minor one, it could be more worthwhile getting the site live 
and then polishing a bit further down the line.

There are plenty of good sites around that don't validate (BBC website, 
for example).

I don't know what sort of pressures were involved in the project. 
Perhaps they had to turn it around in a ridiculously short time and just 
made a desperate measure to get it sorted using this hack as the lesser 
of two evils (the other being missing a launch date).

However: whatever the reasons, it still seems like a fairly desperate 
way of fixing a bug - which makes me think the development process was 
far from smooth, whoever's fault that may be.

Leo