Tags: ua

When should you be using Web Workers? — DasSur.ma

Although this piece is ostensibly about why we should be using web workers more, there’s a much, much bigger point about the growing power gap between the devices we developers use and the typical device used by the rest of the planet.

While we are getting faster flagship phones every cycle, the vast majority of people can’t afford these. The more affordable phones are stuck in the past and have highly fluctuating performance metrics. These low-end phones will mostly likely be used by the massive number of people coming online in the next couple of years. The gap between the fastest and the slowest phone is getting wider, and the median is going down.

Mornington Crescent - Esolang

A (possibly) Turing complete language:

As the validity and the semantics of a program depend on the structure of the London underground system, which is administered by London Underground Ltd, a subsidiary of Transport for London, who are likely unaware of the existence of this programming language, its future compatibility is uncertain. Programs may become invalid or subtly wrong as the transport company expands or retires some of the network, reroutes lines or renames stations. Features may be removed with no prior consultation with the programming community. For all we know, Mornington Crescent itself may at some point be closed, at which point this programming language will cease to exist.

Language and the Invention of Writing | Talking Points Memo

Language is not an invention. As best we can tell it is an evolved feature of the human brain. There have been almost countless languages humans have spoken. But they all follow certain rules that grow out of the wiring of the human brain and human cognition. Critically, it is something that is hardwired into us. Writing is an altogether different and artificial thing.

Building on Vimeo

Here’s the video of the opening talk I gave at New Adventures earlier this year. I think it’s pretty darn good!

Hidden Heroines of Chaos: Ellen Fetter and Margaret Hamilton | Quanta Magazine

Before leading the software project that put men on the moon, Margaret Hamilton worked on the equations that led to chaos theory, followed by Mount Holyoke graduate, Ellen Fetter.

Complexity Explorables

A cornucopia of interactive visualisations. You control the horizontal. You control the vertical. Networks, flocking, emergence, diffusion …it’s all here.

Our intern program is returning for 2019 | Clearleft

Know any graduates who’d like to take part in a fun (paid) three month scheme at Clearleft? Send ‘em our way.

Humanizing Your Documentation - Full Talk - Speaker Deck

The slides from Carolyn’s talk at Beyond Tellerrand. The presentation is ostensibly about writing documentation, but I think it’s packed with good advice for writing in general.

Interview with Kyle Simpson (O’Reilly Fluent Conference 2016) - YouTube

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.

Earth day at Clearleft

Isn’t this just lovely?

Cassie made a visualisation of the power we’re getting from the solar panels we installed on the roof of the Clearleft building.

I highly recommend reading her blog post about the process too. She does such a great job of explaining how she made API calls, created SVGs, and calculated animations.

Disenchantment - Tim Novis

I would urge front-end developers to take a step back, breathe, and reassess. Let’s stop over engineering for the sake of it. Let’s think what we can do with the basic tools, progressive enhancement and a simpler approach to building websites. There are absolutely valid usecases for SPAs, React, et al. and I’ll continue to use these tools reguarly and when it’s necessary, I’m just not sure that’s 100% of the time.

The Technical Debt Myth

In some cases, it’s entirely valid to explore new products and technologies, but in others, our striving for novelty becomes the driving factor for abandoning perfectly suitable solutions under the umbrella of technical debt.

Just because a technology is a few years old and possibly frustrating in some cases doesn’t mean you’re in technical debt. We need to stop projecting our annoyances as pitfalls of technological or design choices.

Atlas of Urban Expansion

Oodles and oodles of data on cities, including gorgeous animations of urban growth over time.

You probably don’t need that hip web framework - Charged

This is a bit ranty but it resonates with what I’ve been noticing lately:

I’ve discovered how many others have felt similarly, overwhelmed by the choices we have as modern developers, always feeling like there’s something we should be doing better.

Yet Another JavaScript Framework | CSS-Tricks

This is such a well-written piece! Jay Hoffman—author of the excellent History Of The Web newsletter—talks us through the JavaScript library battles of the late 2000’s …and the consequences that arose just last year.

The closing line is perfect.

Simple & Boring | CSS-Tricks

Let’s take a meandering waltz through what other people have to say about simplicity.

Brendan Dawes - The Art of Cybersecurity

Some lovely data visualisation by Brendan:

The work features three main components — the threats, represented by black obelisk style objects, the system which detects and deals with these threats, represented by an organic mesh like structure, and finally the creativity that is allowed to flow because the threats have been neutralised.

HTML periodical table (built with CSS grid)

This is a nifty visualisation by Hui Jing. It’s really handy to have elements categorised like this:

• Root elements
• Scripting
• Interactive elements
• Document metadata
• Edits
• Tabular data
• Grouping content
• Embedded content
• Forms
• Sections
• Text-level semantics

Sparkline Sound-Off – Chris Burnell

Chris has made sonic sparklines on his site too, but they’re far more musical than mine. Here’s his explanation of how he did it.

The “Backendification” of Frontend Development – Hacker Noon

Are many of the modern frontend tools and practices just technical debt in disguise?

Ooh, good question!