WTF is Wrong with Web Developers? (Rant)

[Renegade]

I've been trying to be positive, but I just can't take this anymore...

It's virtually impossible to find a web site that actually works properly.

What is wrong with web developers?

Looking at web APIs with some of the worst documentation... Consistently seeing pages that don't display properly...

But what's worse, is it seems like nobody has heard of error checking. I estimate that probably 20% or more of non-major sites, but still regular commerce sites, don't know how to handle a post properly.

I'm just really tired of seeing, "Oh, sorry, we don't do any error checking, and don't know what regular expressions are, so we're just going to puke in your face instead. Thank you for your understanding."

Sigh...

Is it just me? Or do other people find that the web is still crap?

(My main gripe is the inability to properly process a form.)

[iphigenie]

I'm *in* the industry and I feel like tearing my hair out near daily. Especially in ecommerce sites and corporate mazes sites

But I doubt it is a developer issue

[fenixproductions]

Deadlines?

[Renegade]

Deadlines?

-fenixproductions (May 04, 2011, 02:36 PM)

Probably. Some idiot project manager would rather have something that doesn't work now, than have something that works next week. Sigh...

It just seems like a lot of site use some form designer and forget that data needs to be verified.



I sooo do not feel sorry for the school...

[justice]

Obviously there is a market for a solution Renegade

[tomos]

Deadlines?

-fenixproductions (May 04, 2011, 02:36 PM)

Probably. Some idiot project manager would rather have something that doesn't work now, than have something that works next week. Sigh...

It just seems like a lot of site use some form designer and forget that data needs to be verified.



I sooo do not feel sorry for the school...

-Renegade (May 04, 2011, 07:41 PM)

a simple apostrophe in a name (e.g. O'Connor) often causes problems...

[Renegade]

Obviously there is a market for a solution Renegade

-justice (May 05, 2011, 03:30 AM)

Hahahaha~!

True enough. But it's probably easier and cheaper for them to do it all in-house.

One site I use copies you with an email. But for some reason, they assume that your email is run on an open relay. Ahem. Uh... No. Just nuttiness. It's easy enough to fix though.

[iphigenie]

I still encounter places that dont accept a - in a name... grrr or want a US state even for other countries...

But this is not just a deadline thing - it is a management thing, siloed thinking, in my experience. Not having QA as a separate team (even if temporarily), not having the right stakeholder input (hint: more than just marketing should have a say...)

And pretty much this happens everywhere there is custom development, really - and the sad thing is, that in these kinds of projects it is so easy to put feedback loops and testing in place... But I remember a story of the SAP system in J&J which in Europe for the CRM part did not allow italian phone numbers. So the team in Italy had to do each their own workaround for over 2 years, putting numbers in other fields, losing the sync to PDA option etc. A CRM. in a Fortune 100 company. Cant handle phone numbers... (and it wasnt the only problem)