Readcently

journal

by FND

Loosely inspired by Sara Joy’s Weak Notes, my breakfast brain decided a facile pun was necessary to finally try something I’d been considering for a while: Consciously review stuff I’ve bookmarked, re-assess with some distance and highlight things that still seem noteworthy.

Teaching and learning

Consider interactivity over showing over telling.

In typical adactio style, this reflective piece weaves together a variety of sources across time, synthesizing didactic advice.

This also led me to watch API Design is UI Design ( 📼 25 min.) – much of which should be self-evident, but clearly isn’t; it’s always worth reminding ourselves of Just what is it that you want to do?.

Cool URLs Mean Something

(via)

Prompted by increasing link rot, this essay provides historical and intellectual context for the web’s significance as a cultural medium.

[hyperlinks are] the “first significant new form of punctuation to emerge in centuries”

The Case For Design Engineers

Since first reading this, I’ve repeatedly referred to the example within; it’s great for explaining why material honesty matters.

Relatedly, Web Design Engineering ( 📼 50 min.) left a lasting impression – even though, or perhaps precisely because, I myself was already a convert: It took some time for the wider implications to sink in and I continue pondering how we as developers might support other constituencies.

Serving a billion web requests with boring code

(via)

Despite disagreeing with some of the decisions (see discussion in the thread above), I really liked the nuanced, self-critical examination of this case study. That’s exactly the kind of treatment this industry needs more of.

The Frontend Treadmill

Directly related to the case study above:

your frontend framework is the least interesting technical decision for you to make. And all of the time you spend arguing about it is wasted energy.

[…]

Companies that want to reduce the cost of their frontend tech becoming obsoleted so often should be looking to get back to fundamentals. Your teams should be working closer to the web platform with a lot less complex abstractions. We need to relearn what the web is capable of and go back to that.

In the same vein, there’s an interesting exchange on robust front-end architectures, with real-world anecdotes of reputable organizations being bogged down by accidental complexity.