A straight-faced Jake talks us through the step-by-step iterations for turning a JavaScript-required web thang into a progressively enhanced zippy experience, supercharged with Service Worker.
The system makes the website. Don’t blame the web developer, blame the organisation. A web developer embedded in a large system isn’t the one making the websites.
To make a progressively enhanced website that performs well and loads quickly even on slow connections, you need to first make an organisation that values those qualities over others.
This article first appeared in Fast Company almost twenty years ago. It’s a fascinating look into the culture and process that created and maintained the software for the space shuttle. It’s the opposite of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things.”
To be this good, the on-board shuttle group has to be very different — the antithesis of the up-all-night, pizza-and-roller-hockey software coders who have captured the public imagination. To be this good, the on-board shuttle group has to be very ordinary — indistinguishable from any focused, disciplined, and methodically managed creative enterprise.
Two-thirds of the way through our 100 days project, Batesy takes stock of his journey so far.
(I should probably mention that I love each and every one of the pieces of hand lettering that he’s done …talented bastard.)
Susan points out some uncomfortable truths. It’s all very well for us to try and create a culture of performance amongst designers and developers, but it will all be nought if we could change the minds of people higher up the chain …who currently just don’t care.
I think she’s spot on when she points to this possible solution:
I think what I’m asking is, who will be the game changer in this conversation? Who will be the large, bulky site that will work towards performance and make it happen and then we will all point to them and say, see they did it. It seems to me that that is what it takes. Much like we pointed to ESPN and being able to use CSS for layout or The Boston Globe and being able to do responsive at a large scale, who will we point to for the performance overhaul?
In which Dan simultaneously goes to the Netherlands and Belgium in a Miévillian sort of way.
Have a listen to the dConstruct 2011 talk from Kars for context.