I'm a web developer and have taken JS & CSS for common for years and years now. Spent about 6y working at a small local web design shop and it just wasn't feasible to double contract amounts to make sites work without JS.

That said, there's no reason to require JS if it can be done without. Lots of page book-keeping, like menus, active page indicators, etc, can be done with CSS. Some stuff, like Amazon's polygonal focus on subnav can degrade nicely. Fantastic. But I'm not going to build an Ajax-y interface AND a static HTML interface (for free) to coddle people with nothing more than a distrust of JavaScript.

console.log behavior is rather different for objects. Seeing the string "[object object]" is nowhere near as useful as a tree-rendered outline of the object.

If an employer required me to use IE to apply, I'd think long and hard whether it's really worthwhile. My current employer has adopted a new HR system which will soon require a Java applet to apply and if I wasn't already employed that might be enough to dissuade me. (Already working here, I know Java is non-existent internally, but as a new applicant, I'd assume it was a Java shop).

>> while Congress tries to cut every social program, including the FDA, because the country is broke.
Speaking as a person with health problems, PLEASE. The FDA is a disaster. Taking the FDA's budget and burning that money would be less counter productive than the FDA's continued existence. So yes, PLEASE, defund, shutter and otherwise end the FDA.

>> and not a cent for caring for the citizens of this nation, nor our own infrastructure.
And let's keep it that way. "Caring" for me is making my life harder.

Of course this whole comment is off topic. But it's silly to think it's automatically better to spend that $$$ anywhere else.

Think software has a larger block of Libertarians than most other office workers. /. had a poll last week showing Dems and Libertarians in a neck-and-neck race for the biggest political block. Libertarians and Unions don't line up terribly neatly. That's going to be a quick roadblock to any attempt to unionize.

Like the +4 comment from a techie above? This is a very real problem. http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3189429&cid=41672519

Just a different way of thinking. Purely functional programming is possible in JavaScript, and is basically mandated in Clojure. So it's more like comparing JavaScript and "use strict"; -- you want to be pure in your algorithms and so it babysits you.

Clojure: http://clojure.org/

Don't think it's formally Google anymore.

That was my thought. I could use a new pancreas.

Answered $20 = rate = $30.

But it's not important to be 8mbps cutting-edge coverage. 100kbps would be acceptable for a truly unlimited. That's theoretically 260GB a month but if connections were forcibly dropped after, say, 20s the risk to runaway use is pretty effectively mitigated. So on that "unlimited" plan you could get maps, email, most web, social media, etc, but effectively no streaming AV.

Of course the details will vary, but the point is that I'd sooner accept a limit on speed than total transfer.

Adopted Google Voice on prepaid phones as a cost-cutting measure several years back. Little more than a year ago, got a cheap Android phone and put my prepaid SIM in there. It sucked as a smartphone. Many games were missing from the market, no OS updates ever materialized, and I couldn't even buy from the market for the longest time because My "Google Apps account" wasn't a "Google account." It was, but whatever. Kindle was slow, Youtube practically unusable (wifi). Eventually frustration and envy drove me to the iPhone late kast year. And now it actually does most of the things a smartphone is meant to do.

Except phone calls. As I said, I adopted Google Voice years ago. Number porting wasn't an option when I got it so went through the pain of changing my phone number with everyone. So now I have a Google address book, using the Google Voice app. Everyone has two phone numbers, depending whether I'm calling them from the iPhone or the Google Voice app. The address book living with Google means Siri is often confused by aliases (she forgets who my wife is, or any of those sorts of relational terms).

Android was and, near as I can tell, still is a mess as compatibility goes. The Google Apps account mess was finally fixed late in my ownership, but the non-existant software updates still have no real answer. Part of me hopes Samsung or HTC forks Android to make a single, truly updatable version. Right now both platforms have a severe flaw; iPhones in that you must fully drink the koolaid, and Androids that in the name of being so open, nothing is reliable. Neither phone is perfect. iPhone is generally better, and I would rank it above the Android, but neither of them is anywhere near Fantastic.

That is the most brief and coherent explanation of Firefox's versioning failure I've seen.

Web Inspector gained the ability to live update CSS and I gained the ability to switch to Chrome. Between the addon compatibility problems that come from rapid-fire releases and the general slowness Firefox suffers from, I was eager to leave it behind. I still think Firebug is better, and still have it installed, but Chrome is just so much easier/faster/mindless. So I switched.

It looked to me from Ars take on it that they're compiling JS server-side but running it client-side. Timing shouldn't factor into that. It should decrease the time it takes JS to start running because the code's already been parsed and I would think poorly coded animation will run smoother. In a perfect world this feature would make litte difference.

Absolutely. Working in IT when you want to write code is not ideal. But it puts you near where you want to be, talking to the right people. The skillset, as others have said, won't help or hurt, but in the mean time you're drawing a paycheck and fostering professional relationships. Plus. when a development position does open up, you'll likely hear about it first and may have a brief window to apply before it opens up to the world.