Uncle Bob has become that cranky old guy who yells at kids to get off his lawn. Sorry, but we haven't actually got it all figured out yet. This is a silly rant from someone who doesn't want to adapt. He sounds like a "communist" dictator. There will be no dissention! You will not try to create a better way to solve a problem! You will use the things we have always used! Our grandparents built houses with nothing but a hammer and some handmade nails, and so shall you! Actually newer things are sometimes better. Maybe not all of them, maybe not always, but if you never try, then you'll still be building houses with nothing but a hammer and some handmade nails forever. And it's actually fun in the meantime, even if we spend a little time exploring new ideas. Every shiny new thing he derides is probably used successfully by millions of people. Frankly the only reason I am still a software developer is because of new things. Who wants to bang out the same code in exactly the same way year after year?

"That is replaceable with a solder gun a few minutes of time?" I consider myself pretty handy with a soldering iron, and I seriously doubt I have the skills to open up & replace a chip on the tiny printed circuit board of a modern smartphone. I'm not saying it isn't possible. But if you need a shop with skilled technicians to perform physical replacement of a chip, as well as a supply of said chips which presumably you must buy from the manufacturer, then you've definitely succeeded in lowering the immediate value of a stolen phone by quite a bit. This is not something that could be done by any petty thieves, so it requires infrastucture, money, organization, skilled workers, and so on. Not saying it couldn't happen, but at that point, you might as well just make knockoff phones.

There is a difference between having to support IE7, and having to make it look good in IE7. If I were you I would create an adaptive layout that looks good in modern browsers and works on different sized windows to solve the mobile device vs. desktop problem. For the layout details, though, don't limit yourself to CSS that works in IE7. Just accept that things may look not quite right. It's not too hard to make something that works in IE7, though you'll go crazy trying to make it look exactly the same (unless you want it to look like it's 2005 in ALL browsers). If your organization can accept that using an old browser means their web sites aren't going to look like a modern browser, and may have layout issues, then I'd go with that approach. If they expect everything to look snappy in IE7 too, then you're screwed.

So I assume you are still using your first cell phone? But seriously, windows has had, actually, a remarkable longevity. It wasn't until last August that more computers in the US had Windows 7 vs. XP, a 12-year-old operating system. Forking out for Windows isn't exactly something you have to do on a regular basis... if only I could get away with replacing my cell phone as often as I updgrade Windows.

Every self-respecting nerd should remember the words of Scotty (back from the dead) in the dyson sphere episode: Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour. Scotty: How long will it really take? Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: An hour! Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya? Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did. Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

What a shortcut! A qualified programmer would have accounted for the fact that BatteryLifePercent is floating point, and may not be in increments of 1/100th. What if it's 0.975? Obviously this should have been written as:

If SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent <= 1 And
SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent > 0.99 then Return "99%"
ElseIf SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent <= 0.99 And
SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent > 0.98 then Return "98%"
...

:)