HTML 5
HTML 5 – When standards aren’t
If you are a coder, developer, code monkey, whatever, you risk you reputation and career opportunities on the specific choices you make and the design and programming standards you adopt.
As a developer you are the very target of the companies that benefit from your work to support the platforms and devices they deploy. But unfortunately they do not make it easy for you to correctly decide which optimum tools to choose and use.
All too often you must weight the hype and go all-in and gamble on unproven innovations that can change or become obsolete at the drop of a dime.
The current litigious atmosphere does not help settle things down, actually it tends to heighten the anxiety. API’s make it easier to build solutions but there are issues still left unresolved.
Companies like Adobe try to coral you into their proprietary solutions and movements like that behind Open Source have for years tried to open it up to innovation.
So here we are in 2011 and the world of HTML and web design are in the midst of change-over to HTML 5 away from JavaScript, Flash, PHP, Ruby, AJAX and tons of other development environments that litter the field and confuse young minds.
It may be that HTML 5 will actually live up to all the promises made for it or it may eventually give way to something even much easier or more useful, but for now it looks like HTML 5 is where things are headed.
If you are a computer science major take care to include HTML 5 into your course selections and apply yourself to a direction leading to mastery in an area undoubtably rife with tremendous opportunity and long-term potential.
Good luck and happy coding!