The Dangers of Being a Web Developer
Post from May 10, 2018 (↻ December 23, 2022), filed under Web Development (feed).
On Monday I had the great, great pleasure of giving the opening talk at beyond tellerrand in DĂĽsseldorf. The slides are essentially useless, but as I had focused on delivery during the performance the talk should provide value. I hope. Please check out The Dangers of Being a Web Developer on YouTube or Vimeo *.
As I’ve been asked about the talk’s various references to mostly classic and excellent books, here they are:
- Rachel Aaron’s 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love
- Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think
- Jakob Nielsen’s and Marie Tahir’s Homepage Usability
- B.J. Fogg’s Persuasive Technology
- Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style
- Edward Tufte’s books, all of them
- Gary Keller’s The ONE Thing
- Alfie Kohn’s No Contest: The Case Against Competition
Thank you all who attended the talk, and Marc and team for the great conference and the kind invitation, welcome, and hosting! I can’t wait for the next beyond tellerrand—quite possibly in Berlin this November 🙏
* In confusion of obscure European and German data protection legislation I’m not embedding videos at the moment.
About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Thank you!
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