Programming Maturity

The other day I picked up a copy of Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites, a book I’ve meant to read for a long time now. I found this interesting statement in chapter 2:

Standards compliance is a form of programming maturity. Perhaps it is time to grow up a little. You, esteemed reader, will have a conflict to resolve if you want to produce accessible Websites but still work around the quirks of noncompliance. One of them has to go.

I couldn’t have said it better. Having met Joe Clark at SxSW 2005 I can just picture him say these words a-la "Boiler Room" style. :)

Here’s another excellent quote from the same chapter:

A chief advantage of standards compliance is the realization of the long-cherished goal known as "write once, read anywhere." Instead of coding four different versions of a page (for Netscape and Internet Explorer on Windows and Macintosh, respectively—a real-life example), you write one page according to the spec and each device displays the page accurately. Some differences, like the specific appearance of fonts, will remain, but designs should be flexible enough no to be broken by such details.

I couldn't agree more. I think many people assume that anyone can write HTML. Well, yes, anyone can just like anyone can write C#. I could probably write some C#, but it certainly wouldn't be good enough for use in a public-facing project, because I don't know C#.

Unfortunately, lots of people write HTML without knowing HTML.

Going on from what Small Paul says, there seems to be an impression that writing HTML (and associated CSS and JS) just happens and that no skill is actually required to do such things. I'm sure plenty of people add it to their CVs despite lacking detailed knowledge.