I would add that crappy processes and tools are usually in place because the management/leadership in an organization has made them too brittle. While you don't want to wild-west every "critical" issue, bad spots in a process will naturally highlight themselves over time.
Let your tools and processes constantly evolve instead of blindly subscribing to a methodology, and you'll be in much better shape.
Okay, fine. The way he handled this particular issue seems like a dick move. Being one of the godfathers of computer science isn't a license to act like a jerk.
There's no question he's right, but there's nice-right and jerk-right.
This sort of response seems like it only inhibits people's desire to get involved.
I don't mean to overreact, but so were <object> and <embed>, which were what Flash used. If they're creating their own canvas-based way of rendering a UI, it's not really using HTML5... it's just that HTML5 happens to be the container.
And just because it's open source, doesn't mean it's standards-based.
I'll have to dig deeper, but things like "HTML and CSS independent" feel very proprietary to me. It just feels like you're losing out on the shared semantic value of HTML, etc.
Does this scare anyone else, at least just a little bit?
It seems so odd to me that now Flash is being de-emphasized, we're picking it up all over again. Yes, there are some performance benefits and cross-platform problems you can jump over... but isn't this just a proprietary, non-standards way to approach web design all over again?
While some of this is spot on, there's seems to be two threads to this that make less sense to me.
First, "building small things" isn't what many of us do from day to day. I don't think many of us sit down and try to create bloated, overly complex systems, but oversimplification isn't helpful either. If you're wild-westing it or reinventing wheels for your next web project, I can't help but think you've only got serious pain in your (near) future.
I think there's an important difference between complex and complicated. I wonder if you asked Neil about his set if he'd describe it more as an organized toolset that's evolved over time or a sprawling mess of a ball-and-chain he's involuntarily tied to.
I'm no fan of the verbose, Java-like implementations (ZF and SF, I'm looking at you) you've highlighted, but there are more options out there.
Secondly, I take issue with the abrasive tenor a lot of these posts seem to take. All critique and no solutions, especially no code to show for great ideas. While a good F@$* that S@#% helps everyone see the problem, the lack of action or offering of concrete ideas for improvement leaves me with the feeling that it's just complaining.
I wish more of the leadership in this community was contributing in an open-source, here's-the-code sort of way. At least contributing as much as they critique.