We're building a lightweight MVC replacement for a site primarily aimed at low-end "feature phones" for a site that was originally coded in ASP.NET webforms (I know...)
The target market is Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania now, with expansion into the other large countries in the area. The user's phones range from crappy black & white barely-can-browse-the-internet "feature phones" up to the more affluent iPhone-type. Our team's plan to approach this wide variety is to build a very basic, lightweight site that relies on server-side validation for the crap phones; and to "progressively enhance" using javascript (making use of jQuery Mobile for feature detection) so the high-end users get a decent experience.
This is what our "Solutions Architect" had to say on that:
Hi guys. The requirement for XXXXX is no javascript. Even for those feature phones that do "support" JS we dont know what subset is implemented and whether the JS implementation or dynamic DOM works well. Since the requirement is for maximum compatibility even for obscure phones we will never test on, the safest option is to have no JS.
Ja. That is a great idea. Because shitty UX on a feature phone should definitely affect high end users.
Oh great.
Followed up with this fucking uneducated directive from the guy in charge of the project:
Guys, please no Javacript what so ever.
I'm sorry. This fucking problem was solved in 199-fucking-8 when not all browsers supported the same JS. The fact that it has come back and on mobile makes no fucking difference to the concept. Back then it was called "graceful degradation". Now the buzzword is "progressive enhancement". Throughout my entire career as a web developer I've been catering to the lowest target browser while enhancing the higher ones.
FUCK.
This is a project we picked up for another team (while management argues about our upcoming project), so we are doing the guy in charge a favour. Thank god we don't have to work with them all the time.