Ins and Outs of Inputs

I recently stumbled upon blog post about TraceMonkey (thanks to Sisken). TraceMonkey is codename for new improvments to SpiderMonkey (Firefox Javascript engine). Results are very impressive, with speedups ranging from 2x to more than 20x. I love Firefox and I'm looking forward to every new version bringing more exciting features. But what struck me most in the post was this statement:

I fully expect to see more, massive, projects being written in JavaScript. Projects that expect the performance gains that we're starting to see. Applications that are number-heavy (like image manipulation) or object-heavy (like relational object structures).

Now don't get me wrong. I get excited about new features just as much as every other geek :). I see a problem here though. Firefox is biting more of market share pie every month. But however we put it, it's still at most at 30% in some parts of Europe (US is dominated even more by IE). So how can Firefox create incentive for developers to create web applications for ONE specific browser? Sure, few years from now Javascript performance will be much better in other browsers too. What until then? You think that "Sorry, this site was designed for Firefox 3.1 or higher" is any better then "Sorry, this site was designed for Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher"?

You may ask "What about in-house applications, for one company?". In-house applications are already dominated by IE and ActiveX. That's not gonna change overnight. Or maybe I'm wrong.

GDevs (Geeky Developers) are rightly proud of their creations. The problem is when they fail to see the surrounding world. Now almost famous blog post from Ben Collins-Sussman about two types of programmers contains this pearl:

Shocking statement #1: Most of the software industry is made up of 80% programmers. Yes, most of the world is small Windows development shops, or small firms hiring internal programmers. Most companies have a few 20% folks, and they’re usually the ones lobbying against pointy-haired bosses to change policies, or upgrade tools, or to use a sane version-control system.

Shocking statement #2: Most alpha-geeks forget about shocking statement #1. People who work on open source software, participate in passionate cryptography arguments on Slashdot, and download the latest GIT releases are extremely likely to lose sight of the fact that “the 80%” exists at all. They get all excited about the latest Linux distro or AJAX toolkit or distributed SCM system, spend all weekend on it, blog about it… and then are confounded about why they can’t get their office to start using it.

Fortunately for OpenSource community, people like John Resig, Andreas Gal, Mike Shaver, and Brendan Eich are in the 20% crowd. Let's just hope they won't lose sight of the rest of us :)

Developer isolation