Blog
Jens Oliver Meiert on web development and philosophy (and sometimes art and adventure). Writing about quality code and world views since 1999.
5 Reasons Against Resets, Normalizers, Reboots
A word about one of CSS’s horsemen of the apocalypse.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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).
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.
Destroying Is Not Arguing, or: Why It Would Be Bad If Jesus Was Here
Arguing is something we have to learn. I observed this again in recent years when I started studying philosophy and went through courses for logic and argumentation theory. These courses…
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.
CSS @-Rules, an Overview
From @charset to @viewport. Or from @bottom-center to @top-right-corner.
In Defense of Bad Luck
There seems to be something to luck, and bad luck.
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?
What Kills and What Will Save 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…
10 Photos V
The next part of the x-monthly series.
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 controls, and ends with content checks…
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…
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.
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…
Frameworks, Libraries, and the Modern Web Developer: Web Development, Overdone
We are raising tool-dependent rather than self-reliant developers. Aren’t we.
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.
Notification on updates: RSS feed.
Biography
Jens Oliver Meiert is an author, developer (O’Reilly, W3C, ex-Google), and philosopher. He experiments with art and adventure.
As a developer Jens is specialized in high quality code for complex international websites (Google), works on standards (W3C), and writes for technical publishers (O’Reilly: Webdesign mit CSS, The Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks, Coding Guidelines, and Website Quality Control; cf. On Web Development).
As a philosopher, Jens studies academically and researches non-academically; his focus is on metaphysics. He emphasizes self-responsibility (How to Work on Oneself).
As an artist Jens plays with (moving) photography and sensationalism; as an adventurer Jens explores activities (100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer) and localities (Journey of J.).
