An in depth exploration of how far you can get with using JSDoc (and the TypeScript compiler) without resorting to writing TypeScript or having a build step in your project. Link: JSDoc typings: all the benefits of TypeScript, with none of the drawbacks
My partner and I travelled back to Berlin from Las Palmas on a flight on Saturday. Since it was not a long haul flight, there would be no in-flight entertainment. We wanted to wanted to watch series and movies together using my computer, while both using noise cancelling headphones. This turned out to be surprisingly easy to do. I’ll be sure to do this for our journey, which I hope to make by train. That would make watching a couple of lectures or interesting talks from conferences quite enjoyable. ...
This means startups don’t adopt new technologies despite their immaturity, they adopt them because of that immaturity. This drives a constant churn of novelty and obsolescence, which amplifies the importance of a technologist’s skillset, which drives startups to adopt new technologies. Link: trapped in the technologist factory
It’s understandable to think that JavaScript frameworks and their communities are eating the web because places like Twitter are awash with very loud voices from said communities. Always remember that although a subset of the JavaScript community can be very loud, they represent a paltry portion of the web as a whole. This means that when they say something like “CSS sucks” — what they mean is “CSS sucks for a small subset of less than 1 percent of the web”. ...
If cognitive diversity is what we need to succeed in dealing with new, uncertain, and complex situations, we need to encourage people to reveal and deploy their different modes of thinking. We need to make it safe to try things multiple ways. This means leaders will have to get much better at building their team’s sense of psychological safety. Link: Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse
A well built, performant website can be created with any framework or type of technology in existence. It may be harder with some than others, but it can be done. The issue is the developer and designer mindset in many companies. With said mindset being that web development and design should be ‘fun’. I fully believe a lot of developers and software enginers put their job satisfaction above their users or customers. ...
The Lean Web book is very good and recommended for anyone buidling things for the web. Chris Ferdinandi has managed to capture many of the thoughts and ideas, that many of us of have been thinking about since the “JavaScript revolution” started. There’s a talk too, if you’re more into that. Via adactio
If you’re giving individual teams (or gods help you, individuals) free reign to make local decisions about infrastructure, you’re hurting yourself globally. It’s freedom, sure. You’re handing developers a ball of chain and padlocks and telling them to feel free to bind themselves to the operational toil that will be with them until the sweet release of grim death. – Dan McKinley in Choose Boring Technology If your work is in creating and maintaining software, you should read this. ...
Learning how to pick your battles is also about learning how to pick your company and pick your boss, because your job really shouldn’t be all or even mostly about battles. Going through this exercise of solving an unowned problem is fun once in a while, but it’s a real drag when you feel like you’re surrounded by such problems, you can’t ignore them, and you’re powerless to fix them. That is a good sign that it’s time to find a new job, preferably somewhere that is more in tune with your way of doing things. Life is so much more fun when you have people around you that you trust to solve problems, even the problems you have a lot of opinions about. ...