This brought a sad smile to my face.

There was a time when Javascript implementation in Internet Explorer was really top notch and other browsers had something to look up to (apart from memory leaking, which is just embarrassing). But it’s been 5 years since last IE and it will take almost another year to release version 7, which won’t bring any Javascript related changes (apart from native XMLHTTPRequest). I see myself as language minimalist, but there are things that I’d love to see implemented.

However, IE is not the only thing developed with glacial speeds. Even though there’s talk of CSS3, we only received (another?) working draft of CSS 2.1 a couple of weeks ago. So, as many are not aware, even CSS 2.1 hasn’t seen a final release yet even though it’s been widely used for a while now.

Slow development pace does have certain benefits. We get more time to learn and master new stuff and what we learned doesn’t age as quickly as it would otherwise. But when limits of what you have rub you the wrong way, it can be quite depressing to calculate how long it will take to remedy this. Especially if you’re bound not only to development of a technology, but also to its deployment. Thank <some deity> this is not an issue for me with Python 2.5.

In the line of work that I do, I can pretty much forget anything in development which needs browser support, since it won’t be deployed widely enough in this decade. I don’t, since I’m a geek, but I could as there’s little I can do with it and there’s a whole history of great promises that didn’t make it in the end.

It does, however, pose an interesting question without an answer. When should I start learning something new?