Alex Russell:

“On this point the essay also contains a rhetorical bait-and-switch which I find distasteful: it dismisses variables because they don’t inherently do anything to reduce the lengths of pages (true!) and then argues against macros and inheritance because they create levels of indirection which can be confusing. Inheritance and macro definitions can play a key role in drastically reducing the length of style sheets. In this way, they promote understanding through exactly the same ‘memory effect’ mechanism that is cited as a liability when discussing variables.”

I love the way that Alex has so calmly ripped apart the half-hearted arguments that have been a more an more frequent occurrence from members of standards bodies.

Lately, I’ve been amazed by some of the attitudes arising from people that aren’t “in the trenches” of web development, but still feel like they have something of a valid opinion to offer. I appreciate that we have people like David Flannagan have reached out to the community, acknowledging that although they have a deep technical knowledge of a subject, they can be out of touch with its actual use. There needs to be more of this.