Decomputerization doesn’t mean no computers. It means that not all spheres of life should be rendered into data and computed upon. Ubiquitous “smartness” largely serves to enrich and empower the few at the expense of the many, while inflicting ecological harm that will threaten the survival and flourishing of billions of people.
Six UX lessons from game design:
- Story vs Narrative (Think in terms of story arcs)
- Games are fractal (Break up the journey from big to small to tiny)
- Learning loop (figure out your core mechanic)
- Affordances (Prompt for known loops)
- Hintiness (Move to new loops)
- Pacing (Be sure to start here)
I love React. I love how server side rendering React apps is trivial because it all compiles down to vanilla HTML rather than web components, effectively turning it into a kickass template engine that can come alive. I love the way you can very effectively still do progressive enhancement by using completely semantic markup and then letting hydration do more to it.
I also hate React. I hate React because these behaviours are not defaults. React is not gonna warn you if you make a form using divs and unlabelled textboxes and send the whole thing to a server. I hate React because CSS-in-JS approaches by default encourage you to write completely self contained one off components rather than trying to build a website UI up as a whole. I hate the way server side rendering and progressive enhancement are not defaults, but rather things you have to go out of your way to do.
An absolutely brilliant post by Laura on how the priorites baked into JavaScript tools like React are really out of whack. They’ll make sure your behind-the-scenes code is super clean, but not give a rat’s ass for the quality of the output that users have to interact with.
And if you want to adjust the front-end code, you’ve got to set up all this tooling just to change a div to a button. That’s quite a barrier to entry.
In elevating frontend to the land of Serious Code we have not just made things incredibly over-engineered but we have also set fire to all the ladders that we used to get up here in the first place.
AMEN!
I love React because it lets me do my best work faster and more easily. I hate React because the culture around it more than the library itself actively prevents other people from doing their best work.
I find myself doing pseudo code before I write real code, sure, but I also leave it in place sometimes in code comments.
Same!
Brad describes how he has found his place in the world of React, creating UI components without dabbling in business logic:
Instead of merely creating components’ reference HTML, CSS, and presentational JS, frontend designers can create directly consumable HTML, CSS, and presentational JS that back-of-the-frontend developers can then breathe life into.
What’s clear is that the term “React” has become as broad and undefined as the term “front-end”. Just saying that someone does React doesn’t actually say much about the nature of the work.
When you say “we’re hiring a React developer”, what exactly do you mean by that? “React developer” is almost as vague as “frontend developer”, so clarify. Are you looking for a person to specialize in markup and styles? A person to author middleware and business logic? A person to manage data and databases? A person to own build processes?
Don’t miss this—a masterclass in SVG animation with Cassie (I refuse to use the W word). Mark your calendar: August 20th.
When people talk about learning React, I think that React, in and of itself, is relatively easy to understand. At least, I felt it was. I have components. I have JSX. I hit some hiccups with required keys or making sure I was wrapping child elements properly. But overall, I felt like I grasped it well enough.
Throw in everything else at the same time, though, and things get confusing because it’s hard at first to recognize what belongs to what. “Oh, this is Redux. That is React. That other thing is lodash. Got it.”
This resonates a lot with Dave’s post:
React is an ecosystem. I feel like it’s a disservice to anyone trying to learn to diminish all that React entails. React shows up on the scene with Babel, Webpack, and JSX (which each have their own learning curve) then quickly branches out into technologies like Redux, React-Router, Immutable.js, Axios, Jest, Next.js, Create-React-App, GraphQL, and whatever weird plugin you need for your app.
Twenty hard-won lessons from Dan from ten years of Dribbble.
We sent 50 shirts along with a card to friends and colleagues announcing Dribbble’s beta back in 2008. This first batch of members played a pivotal role in the foundation of the community and how it would develop. The shirt helped guilt them into actually checking out the site.
I think I still have my T-shirt somewhere!
This looks like an excellent conference line-up! Alas, I won’t be able to make it (I’m out of the country when it’s on) but you should definitely go if you can.
Lots and lots of programming advice. I can’t attest to the veracity and efficacy of all of it, but this really rang true:
If you have no idea how to start, describe the flow of the application in high level, pure English/your language first. Then fill the spaces between comments with the code.
And this:
Blogging about your stupid solution is still better than being quiet.
You may feel “I’m not start enough to talk about this” or “This must be so stupid I shouldn’t talk about it”.
Create a blog. Post about your stupid solutions.
This really is a most excellent introduction to React. Complete with cheat sheet!
This is a wonderfully written post packed with hard-won wisdom.
This are the myths that Monica dispelled for herself:
- I’m a senior developer
- Everyone writes tests
- We’re so far behind everyone else (AKA “tech FOMO”)
- Code quality matters most
- Everything must be documented!!!!
- Technical debt is bad
- Seniority means being the best at programming
The lowest common denominator of the Web. The foundation. The rhythm section. The ladyfingers in the Web trifle. It’s the HTML. And it is becoming increasingly clear to me that there’s a whole swathe of Frontend Engineers who don’t know or understand the frontend-est of frontend technologies.
This post absolutely nails what’s special about CSS …and why supersmart programmers might have trouble wrapping their head around it:
Other programming languages often work in controlled environments, like servers. They expect certain conditions to be true at all times, and can therefore be understood as concrete instructions as to how a program should execute.
CSS on the other hand works in a place that can never be fully controlled, so it has to be flexible by default.
Max goes on to encapsulate years of valuable CSS learnings into some short and snappy pieces of advices:
No matter what your level of CSS knowledge, this post has something for you—highly recommended!
I can relate to this.
A cornucopia of interactive visualisations. You control the horizontal. You control the vertical. Networks, flocking, emergence, diffusion …it’s all here.
At Clearleft, we’re always saying “Everything is a tiny lesson!”, so I love, love, love this bit of Manuel’s website where notes down short code snippets of little things he learns.
A deep, deep, deep dive into the JPEG format. Best of all, it’s got interactive explanations you can tinker with, a la Nicky Case or Bret Victor.
What would Wiener think of the current human use of human beings? He would be amazed by the power of computers and the internet. He would be happy that the early neural nets in which he played a role have spawned powerful deep-learning systems that exhibit the perceptual ability he demanded of them—although he might not be impressed that one of the most prominent examples of such computerized Gestalt is the ability to recognize photos of kittens on the World Wide Web.
I missed this when it was first posted three years ago, but now I think I’ll be revisiting this 12 minute interview every few months.
Everything that Kyle says here is spot on, nuanced, and thoughtful. He talks about abstraction, maintainability, learning, and complexity.
I want a transcript of the whole thing.