Link tags: perception

The (extremely) loud minority | Andy Bell

I’ll compare WordPress with React and Vue, because if you didn’t look at the data, you’d think everyone was building with them, right? Absolutely wrong.

Andy reminds of the skewed world of dev perception:

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.

React Bias

Dev perception.

The juxtaposition of The HTTP Archive’s analysis and The State of JS 2020 Survey results suggest that a disproportionately small—yet exceedingly vocal minority—of white male developers advocate strongly for React, and by extension, a development experience that favors thick client/thin server architectures which are given to poor performance in adverse conditions. Such conditions are less likely to be experienced by white male developers themselves, therefore reaffirming and reflecting their own biases in their work.

The (extremely) loud minority - Andy Bell

Dev perception:

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.

Let’s Define CSS 4 · Issue #4770 · w3c/csswg-drafts

Jen kicked off a fascinating thread here:

It’s come up quite a few times recently that the world of people who make websites would greatly benefit from the CSS Working Group officially defining ”CSS 4”, and later “CSS 5“, etc.

The level is discourse is impressively smart and civil.

Personally, I don’t (yet) have an opinion on this either way, but I’ll be watching it unfold with keen interest.

Thinking about the past, present, and future of web development – Baldur Bjarnason

The divide between what you read in developer social media and what you see on web dev websites, blogs, and actual practice has never in my recollection been this wide. I’ve never before seen web dev social media and forum discourse so dominated by the US west coast enterprise tech company bubble, and I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades now.

Baldur is really feeling the dev perception.

Web dev driven by npm packages, frameworks, and bundling is to the field of web design what Java and C# in 2010s was to web servers. If you work in enterprise software it’s all you can see. Web developers working on CMS themes (or on Rails-based projects) using jQuery and plain old JS—maybe with a couple of libraries imported directly via a script tag—are the unseen dark matter of the web dev community.

The Real Dark Web

Charlie’s thoughts on dev perception:

People speak about “the old guard” and “stupid backwards techniques”, forgetting that it’s real humans, with real constraints who are working on these solutions. Most of us are working in a “stupid backwards way” because that “backwardsness” WORKS. It is something that is proven and is clearly documented. We can implement it confident that it will not disappear from fashion within a couple of years.

PWA: Progressive Web All-the-things - Tales of a Developer Advocate by Paul Kinlan

Very valuable observations from Paul on his travels, talking to developers and business people about progressive web apps—there’s some confusion out there.

My personal feeling is that everyone is really hung up on the A in PWA: ‘App’. It’s the success and failure of the branding of the concept; ‘App’ is in the name, ‘App’ is in the conscious of many users and businesses and so the associations are quite clear.

Learning to See on Information Architects

A sweet, beautiful love letter to design, from Oliver.

Color Survey Results « xkcd

The wonderfully detailed analysis of a colour questionnaire.

Humanising data: introducing “Chernoff Schools” for Ashdown – Blog – BERG

Matt gets an opportunity to use the Chernoff effect for visualising school data.

Change blindness and the role of the grey flicker- 90 Percent of Everything

An interesting look at the way our brains responds to changes in our environment ...with video.

Moving Dots Demo

There appears to be a form of synesthesia where people "hear" motion. Watch this video (repeatedly) to test your own sensory perception.

Right Brain v Left Brain | Herald Sun

I can only see the dancer going clockwise. Jessica saw anti-clockwise at first but was then able to change direction. I can't do that.

eChalk colour perception

This is the most amazing optical effect in the world... or at least a good mind hack.