What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men.
— Cool Hand Luke

I don’t know why I let myself get pulled in, but I always do. Somebody on a mailing list makes some declaration about why web standards aren’t worth using, and I have to jump in. You would think I would know better by now — some people you just can’t reach.

I hear the same excuses over and over; excuses that have already been asked and answered. This time I started wondering: What if the same excuses were used by other professionals? Let’s think about that:

• Contractor: “I don’t have time to worry about whether the foundation of the house is solid. That’s time I could be using to pick out furniture.”
• Mechanic: “I don’t need to learn the correct way to fix cars. I’ll just do what seems to work, and maybe I’ll learn a better way later.”
• Doctor: “Sure, I’ve heard about modern medical practices, but most of the people in the world haven’t, so I’ll just stick with leeching.”

Oh well, I should be happy. The longer most designers ignore web standards, the longer I will have a leg up on the competition.

Still, I don’t like it anymore than you do…

When I was in school, teachers would sometimes let us bring a cheat sheet to a test with, “whatever we could fit on a single sheet of paper.” I, of course, would always demonstrate how the textbook could easily be balanced on a single sheet of paper.

Teachers often found me exhausting.

Once I had a computer, I would print notes in the smallest font possible. This prompted them to add “hand-written” to the cheat sheet disclaimers.

It is with much nostalgia that I point to the Cheat Sheet Roundup - Over 30 Cheatsheets for developers. Some of these would have been quite handy for tests.