<i>But you don&#x27;t have to use any of these newer technologies! Even if it&#x27;s evolving rapidly, it&#x27;s also pretty strict when maintaining backwards compatibility.</i><p>I wish that were true. Unfortunately, thanks to browser developers&#x27; open hostility towards plug-ins like Flash, Java and Silverlight, it is no longer possible to build specific parts of a web site&#x2F;app that need extra functionality using a range of tools, and instead all you get is browser-native HTML5 and JS and so on. When they work. Which they frequently don&#x27;t. And if they do, they might not tomorrow, because browsers update every six weeks and break non-trivial applications of HTML&#x2F;CSS&#x2F;JS and related technologies all the time.<p>Until we get back to having a sensible degree of standardisation and stability in the platforms and the tools we use to build on them, it will remain impossible to be sensibly productive when building professional-quality sites and apps. You simply can&#x27;t do that when you&#x27;re building on perpetual beta-quality foundations and the goalposts are moving literally every few days in ways that can break your entire app or tools set-up, because you will inevitably spend a stupid amount of time on overheads.