Jens Oliver Meiert

Web Development × Engineering Management × Philosophy (8)

Articles and books on the craft of web development (with a focus on HTML/CSS optimization and maintainability), engineering management, and philosophy.

How Declaration Repetition Developed Over Time, a Statistically Insignificant Sample

We know that there’s excessive declaration repetition in the Web’s style sheets, that each declaration is on average repeated 2–3 times, often needlessly. We know that this repetition is a little less bad on tech sites


#370 · · development, css

Highlights From “Advice to Young Men” (William Cobbett)

“The first thing to be required of a man is, that he understand well his own calling, or profession; and, be you in what state of life you may, to acquire this knowledge ought to be your first and greatest care.”

#369 · · misc

On Loyalty

We should be protective of our greatest possession—our values.

#368 · · misc

The Compact Guide to Web Maintainability: 200 Tips and Resources

The result of reviewing, normalizing, rephrasing, sorting, and testing 134 responses to a maintainability survey that yielded more than 500 data points, to form a new guide, a new and more definite guide to web maintainability.

#367 · · development, html, css, maintainability

Oh WTF My Tone, or: On Germans Speaking English

Anecdote. When I was working at Google, shortly after I had made one of my first bigger contributions, I experienced one of my more memorable performance reviews. You’ll never guess what happened next.

#366 · · misc

Highlights From “The Elements of Style” (William Strunk Jr.)

“Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is.”

#365 · · design, misc

On Material Design

When Google introduced Material Design back in 2014, I was happy; I was happy for the team and I was happy for Google to mark another milestone on the long way of improving the aesthetics of their products. But, I was also concerned.

#364 · · design

The Two Extremes of Writing CSS, and What We Can Learn From Them

Extremes can be useful. In practice they help get the maximum out of a given approach, and in theory they can show what we’re headed to. Compare two ways of writing CSS—like Tachyons or Atomic CSS, and 2000’s idealistic engineering.

#363 · · development, css

On Meeting and Leaving People

Humans are social. Cooperation got us where we are. There are several ways to get to know new people, and, in relationships, to leave them. A few thoughts.

#362 · · misc

What We Know

On some days, if you asked me about what we know, with absolute certainty, I’d respond with “only that something exists.” And if you asked me what that meant, then I’d add “to appreciate and work with what exists.”

#361 · · philosophy

On Writing 1,000 Poems

A story of venturing into an entirely different genre.

#360 · · design, misc

Privacy Experiments: How to Auto-Generate Random Web Traffic

I believe that privacy, which has never been about “hiding something,” is a fundamental civil right, one that is but must not be infringed on; so I once more played with randomizing personal web traffic.

#359 · · misc

Expert Web Development: A 3rd Key Differentiator

As web developers we have decisions to make and our decisions depend on a few variables. Two that have become much more important over the years are the one of code for research or production, and the one of web site or app


#358 · · development

An Ode to Smashing Magazine

Excitement about a success story.

#357 · · development

Performance of CSS Selectors Is Still Irrelevant

From my upcoming book on CSS optimization: Selector performance is not something to optimize for as the price we pay for it is terrible: We micro-manage our work for gains that aren’t noticeable.

#356 · · development, css, performance

On Big Picture Thinking in Web Development

Thoughts on thinking outside the box, in tech, with examples ranging from selector performance to a general development vision, to illustrate how very different issues can all reach beyond their perimeter.

#355 · · development, performance, maintainability, accessibility, design

CSS: The Reason Why Selectors Should Be Ordered, Too

We’ve talked a lot about declarations as declarations are at the heart of our work with direct consequences for the quality of our style sheets. We’ve not talked much about selectors, though, and that may be a mistake.

#354 · · development, css

Static Site Generation With Grow: How to Set Up Syndication Feeds

Grow is a static site generator that I’ve slowly been switching to on my own projects. Here I wish to lay out how to do something with Grow that’s not overly difficult, but also not well-documented—to set up syndication feeds.

#353 · · development

The Scientific Irony

There’s no proof that life has meaning; therefore, life is meaningless. Wait, what?

#352 · · philosophy

DRY CSS: How to Use Declarations Just Once, Effectively

Using declarations just once is one way to control repetition in style sheets. It’s not a silver bullet, as we’ve seen with recent data, but it’s so powerful as to make for a key style sheet optimization method.

#351 · · development, css, optimization

5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots

A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.

#350 · · development, css

The 3 Levels of Code Consistency

Consistency is a factor for code quality and one of the key reasons why we need coding guidelines. Interestingly enough there are three levels of consistency: individual, collective, and institutional.

#349 · · development, quality

Understandable-Simple vs. Minimal-Simple Code

Code simplicity seems to be a goal quite worthwhile, contributing to better understanding, greater robustness, and higher quality. That’s at least what comes to my mind when looking at the matter


#348 · · development, minimalism

On Enforcing Coding Guidelines

Surprisingly a snippet from The Little Book of Website Quality Control, not the one of HTML/CSS coding guidelines, a few thoughts on enforcing coding standards.

#347 · · development, management

What Happens When You Email the Companies That Are Responsible for 71% of All Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A few months ago I ran into an article referring to data from the Carbon Disclosure Project. I realized that the data may have been inaccurate and incomplete but also that it presented an avenue for us to actually do, a little.

#346 · · misc, advocacy

What Happens When You Email Each of the 1,380 Members of the German and European Parliaments

Over the last couple of months I have emailed, each individually, all the 631 members of the (departing) German Bundestag as well as 749 members of the European Parliament (I was short two MEPs).

#345 · · misc, advocacy

Freedom = ƒ(Money)?

No, this question is not new. However it’s one I want to ponder with you because it much seems like something truly terrible has happened over the centuries.

#344 · · philosophy, advocacy

Why It Would Be Bad if Jesus Was Here

Arguing is something we have to learn. I observed this particularly in recent years when I started studying philosophy and went through courses for logic and argumentation theory. These courses


#343 · · philosophy, misc

The Cost of Frameworks, Illustrated

A visual attempt to show how for everything built for the long run, external frameworks are a pricey crutch that has to be avoided or be thrown away at the earliest time. The reasons: quality—and cost.

#342 · · development, frameworks, quality

CSS @-Rules, an Overview

From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.

#341 · · development, css

In Defense of Bad Luck

There seems to be something to luck, and bad luck.

#340 · · philosophy

What We Should Teach Up-and-Coming Developers

Evidently, learning is important, and learning strategies are, too, and how to generally work on ourselves, absolutely, but what else to aim for apart from understanding computer science fundamentals, reading the specs, and—coding?

#339 · · development, management

What Kills and What Saves Content Management Systems

Imagine you just moved into a new place, and realize that you lack a screwdriver to put up some of your furniture (it’s not from IKEA). You ring at your neighbors’, find one who’s home, and she


#338 · · development

10 Photos V

The next part of the x-monthly series.

#337 · · design, photography

On Being a Philosopher

I call myself a philosopher even though some people would disagree with me being one. Why would I be a philosopher? What makes a philosopher?

#336 · · philosophy

Living Websites, Living Books

To me, websites are living objects. They require regular care and maintenance. Such care starts with monitoring, from uptime control to visual site tests, demands technical quality control, and ends with content checks


#335 · · development, misc

Website Optimization Measures, Part VIII

Eight years. Eight years has it been since the last episode of this series, “Website Optimization Measures.” In October of 2009, I last talked about more or less random things I did on my own websites


#334 · · development, optimization

On Adventure

While I’m not nearly as adventurous these days as in past years, the idea that adventure is about being open and curious and easily ready to try activities and localities seems sound to me. On what adventure can mean to us.

#333 · · adventure

Web Development: How Making Our Own Lives Difficult Is More Important Than We Think

Many moons ago I wrote that web developers wouldn’t need debugging tools. I was half joking and half serious. We were just coming out of the dark ages of web development, so to speak, undernourished of useful tools, frameworks, libraries


#332 · · development, maintainability

Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone

We are raising tool-dependent rather than self-reliant developers. Aren’t we.

#331 · · development, frameworks

What I Learned Building Google’s Web Frameworks

On building Google’s Go and Maia HTML/CSS frameworks, and succeeding and failing as a tech lead.

#330 · · development, html, css, frameworks

Boy Scout Code

Of course, always leave code better than you found it.

#329 · · development, quality

Stop Using Resets: Visual Examples of the Practical Nonsense of Resets and Normalizers

Or, when Jens found out that he could just collect websites that use reset style sheets and the like, disable those style sheets, document the results and write a post with the diffs for visual evidence. All because “we ran after this mirage for more than a decade.”

#328 · · development, css

Highlights From Martin’s “The Behavior of Crowds”

“When most of our neighbors are motivated by certain ideas, those ideas become part of the social environment to which we must adjust ourselves. In this sense they are ‘real,’ however ‘crazy.’”

#327 · · misc

Highlights From Dewey’s “How We Think”

“The very importance of thought for life makes necessary its control by education because of its natural tendency to go astray, and because social influences exist that tend to form habits of thought leading to inadequate and erroneous beliefs.”

#326 · · philosophy

Two Paradigms of Web Development

On a sunny Tuesday in DĂŒsseldorf a few weeks back, at Beyond Tellerrand, I had a pleasant recorded conversation with the team of Working Draft. In our discussion we briefly touched on the idea of web development paradigms


#325 · · development, css

The Great Web Maintainability Survey Results

Four weeks ago I started a survey about good and bad practices when it comes to the maintenance and maintainability of websites. Participation was amazing, and here are the first results.

#324 · · development, maintainability

Why I’m Suspending Interviews With U.S. Companies

Over the last few quarters I was in conversations to move back to the United States. Over the last few weeks I noticed that that would feel like endorsing U.S. policy, and contradict my principles and values.

#323 · · misc

The Simple Answer to Our Terrorism Problems

How about we stop invading countries and murdering people. How about we allow those who are too afraid to live in freedom to live in supermax prisons (for free). And how about we finally remove from office who ever proposes to violate a human right.

#322 · · misc, advocacy

Regarding the Fermi Paradox

When not finding signs of extraterrestrial intelligence says more about us than them.

#321 · · philosophy