On Loyalty

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

Published on January 27, 2018, filed under Everything Else.

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.

Published on January 24, 2018, filed under Web Development.

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.

Published on January 17, 2018, filed under Everything Else.

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.”

Published on January 15, 2018, filed under Art and Design and Everything Else.

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.

Published on January 11, 2018, filed under Art and 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.

Published on January 2, 2018, filed under Web Development.