As a web developer who deals with IE issues everyday, I can testify that this is worth it for those who can get away with it. If you are a startup that targets anyone creative or "new" end users, or if you have a significant web application, I'd highly consider it.

There are people who say that an experienced web developer can work around IE issues -- and they can. The problem is, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. Let me explain. The cost to make your application support IE is enormous. And I'm not just talking about the cost to make it work and feature complete in the browser. I'm talking about the cost that you could be working on other products or features that drive the business -- the stuff that really matters and delights users.

Beyond preventing you from focusing on what matters, there's also a significant amount of technical debt that has to be inherited with every IE hack you add to your code base, and in some cases supporting IE can mean saying no to certain product features that otherwise could have been possible. This means that IE is actively inflicting damage to other browsers and is in effect lowering all your users -- even if they have a good browser -- on to a least common denominator experience.

IE also hurts your customer service and support personnel. Troubleshooting IE specific issues and quirks is painful, random and at times non-deterministic. You'll likely be consulting arcane MSDN articles published in the early to mid 2000's, and in general frustrating customers and developers alike. It can affect your entire organization, keeping everyone busy working around the issues -- from your front line customer service people, to product managers and developers. It's simply amazing what damage the browser can and does do to a web company.

I also agree that IE, in any version thus far widely available, is an albatross. In Microsoft's defense, I haven't used IE10 for development purposes nor do I target it (that's because almost no one uses it and access to the browser is hard to get outside of developer previews). But even IE9 is simply too little, too late. And in too little I mean it still doesn't get all of CSS3 right (I still have to create hacks around various issues and have only marginally more confidence compared to IE8). Not to mention the fact that users must be on Vista or Win7 means many Windows users will be stuck on IE8 for years, making it even more irrelevant. By the time IE9 has finally reached critical mass, the other browsers will likely be light years ahead (Chrome major version 30 by then??). This issue with upgrade path and slow speed of innovation is cause for great concern with developing anything on IE.

Developer tools in the IE browsers are also less than stellar. Microsoft has invested large amounts of effort and time into its Visual Studio line of tools and it shows. They are generally high quality and provide an excellent developer experience for working and debugging code. In stark contrast, IE Developer Toolbar, F9 Developer Tools, and Microsoft Script Debugger seem like after thoughts. The experience is subpar in almost every category compared to working with Firebug in Firefox, built-in Firefox debugging tools, and the amazing WebKit inspector and remote debugger. In addition, the tools and usage of them is fragmented across the different IE versions (a different combination of tools is needed per version to debug issues and inspect the DOM). As far as I know, remote debugging isn't widely available for IE, in any version.

Why has this happened? I largely feel that Microsoft's lack of focus on the browser and web standards over the past 10 years, and instead it's focus on Visual Studio and .NET have led them to a serious game of catch up. The browsers themselves are inadequate, the developer tools are not high quality, and the upgrade speed and innovation path takes years. Add all this together and it's a recipe for continued issue and pain with IE - in any version. Incremental improvements may be made, but they are just that. There will always be a game of catchup to be played, along with a new bag of hacks to implement and associated organization pain.

So if you can, do it! Drop IE! Your developers, employees and customers will thank you!