Web Development Has a Short-Term Memory

Published on May 1, 2025, filed under development. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

This is one of 180 articles that you can also read in an ebook: On Web Development II.

Running Frontend Dogma, for which I’ve over the past years scanned more than 50,000 articles and videos from about 30 years of web development (of which I processed more than 15,000), and currently migrating 100s of articles from meiert.com, which I’ve been running for more than 20 years, I can say what I’ve already given away in the title:

Web development has a short-term memory.

You cannot believe how much stuff is being said all over again, even by the same people (guilty as charged).

Now yes, there are several information management problems and there isn’t really a good way of knowing that someone else may have written the same thing. But that doesn’t make the amount of repetition any less astonishing, frustrating, humbling, and even funny.

I’m taking the route of merely sharing the observation, but I’m thinking about a way to present examples.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Interpret charitably but be critical—and share feedback and advice that makes my work better.)