Considering they way it went down [1], Microsoft felt (and may still feel) that the web is an enterprise market. In so, that it was selling developer tools to web shops because the code goes through Microsoft servers to Microsoft clients. IE, a vertical integration to simplify HR decisions. [2]
That ideology carries through to the spec—enterprise products often contain janky features that mean little to developers, but the world to the bosses buying them.
Thankfully Android and iOS are a driving force showing that the web is more a consumer broadcast space than one built simply for the spec that best matches someone's tech opinions.
2. Paraphrasing, but I've personally turned down jobs that were in this vein, specifically writing IE HTML in Visual Studio, because if their browser share is 80% IE, they might as well use the IDE from the company that makes the browser.
Is it common practice to force particular IDE to developers? Especially for web developers. I imagine my productivity would decrease quite dramatically for some time.
Only the most insane of companies explicitly require the use of a specific editor, but it's easy for the choices of technology to implicitly limit developers to a single IDE. If your project's build system assumes that everyone is using Visual Studio (or Eclipse, or whatever), then using something else is going to either require a lot of switching between them or a lot of extra work on your part.
That ideology carries through to the spec—enterprise products often contain janky features that mean little to developers, but the world to the bosses buying them.
Thankfully Android and iOS are a driving force showing that the web is more a consumer broadcast space than one built simply for the spec that best matches someone's tech opinions.
1. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/
2. Paraphrasing, but I've personally turned down jobs that were in this vein, specifically writing IE HTML in Visual Studio, because if their browser share is 80% IE, they might as well use the IDE from the company that makes the browser.