Maybe it could use an overhaul. But at what cost? If the browser defaults were changed, then every classic site instantly breaks. Should millions of classic sites need to be rewritten because we changed how table layout defaults work? What about sites backed up in the internet archive? If we change modern browsers, none of those will render properly when we access them. Should we need to re-edit every site we pull out of the archive to conform to the latest standards so we can view them? They stick with the defaults because people still want older sites to not be broken, and by it's nature, browsers need to work for all sites, not just yours.
No offense intended, but to put it blunty that's not necessarily a good argument. I could just as easily say "Should millions of classic Windows 98 programs need to be rewritten because we changed the OS code by updating to Windows 7?" And of course you wouldn't do it in one jump, you'd support both for a while, then switch over to solely the new one, giving people time to migrate things and do reworks. Computer languages evolve over time and many eventually get dropped. Does anyone even still develop on COBOL anymore? (Yes, I realize there are probably still a very rare few people still using some form or other, but I know people who are still using Windows 98 too
.) Just because people are still using something isn't necessarily a good reason why something shouldn't be changed, just another factor to take into account. You still need to eventually draw the line somewhere, and indeed we've seen at least some compatibility breaks showing up in Mac's Lion and Yosemite versions and in Windows 10.
An amusing analogy (no offense meant, itisnotlogical) would be a bunch of people in a queue waiting to be served, and if you ask really nice, the server person will make you a cup of tea while you wait. Someone then says "hurumph! A cup of tea while I wait is a necessity, I shouldn't have to ask for a cup of tea, cups of tea should be the default! Honestly, they will make me a cup of tea if I ask so they musn't be that busy. Just make me a cup of tea without me needing to ask every time!" With the obvious outcome that they now spend most of their time making cups of tea for everyone, regardless of whether those specific people wanted the tea, or plan to drink it.
Similarly something like this is again just another factor to consider in a given situation. If 60% of people didn't want any tea, and only 5% of people would actually drink the tea, then it's obviously not going to be something you want to do. On the other hand if 95% of people are going to ask you for tea, and almost every one of them is actually going to drink it, then you're actually going to save time in the long run by simply running your tea as an opt-out instead of an opt-in, because the time it takes you to deal with 95 people asking you for tea is going to outweigh the cost of 5 people asking you to not have tea enough to cover any extra cups you accidentally make.
Right now we the majority of people can't handle video quality: fucking awesome, and many people don't even want it (usually because they know they can't handle it). On the other hand 20-30 years from now, when hopefully the majority of us have some form of fiber/etc. and 95% of people
can handle it? Then yeah, I'm gonna want to change the defaults at that point, because the amount of bandwidth wasted by the 5% who start loading and have to reload when they switch to a lower quality level is going to far outweigh the amount of bandwidth and time cost by forcing the other 95% to go and change the quality setting every single time.
It's just basic cost/reward analysis, and, based on my personal experiences, there's a lot that could be done. That's not necessarily saying that that's what should be done, though! I'm obviously still learning and I'm sure there are tons of people out there with more experience than me and with better access to widespread data on the language's problems, complaints, and so forth. I'm just stating what I, through my personal experiences, have encountered in my dealings with it.
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Topic: if self.isCoder(): post() #Programming Thread (Read 907941 times)