Drew Powers10 things I’ve changed my mind about regarding #WebDev over the years. May change my mind again, who knows.
1/ JavaScript isn’t *that* bad. Yes, yes, I know. Addy Osmani. Alex Russell. Progressive enhancement. Islands architecture. But collectively we’ve gotten it wrong multiple times what the internet is *for* and how people *want* to use it. People want interactivity. Sure, static documents will always be a part of the web, but it’s not so bad having simple LLM interfaces that *actually understand you* and answer your question 100x faster than a gamified, ad-ridden website with horrible IA.
2/ Frontenders *should* learn design. CSS only gets better and better in my eyes, and has aged like a fine wine. But to understand it, you have to think like a UI designer. Not tryna gatekeep here—anyone can learn design! Anyone. But put the time in if you want to really understand CSS.
3/ Design is actually kinda bad at solving problems outside the domain of design. Designers trying to put themselves at the head of the table, and be the bottleneck of the entire org by being the central problem-solvers just didn’t work out well. By the numbers, it hasn’t gone well. By most sociology experiments of how people collaborate, it’s not designers that have solved the world’s problems. Many ugly things never blessed by a designer work incredibly well.
4/ Accessibility is core to the internet. If you’re not making experiences accessible, don’t even bother. The internet is better without your content black box.
5/ Just load 1 image size everywhere. On desktop, you load the big image. But mobile is physically really tiny and PEOPLE NEED TO ZOOM. And they end up needing the big res anyway. 99% of you are too lazy to upscale images on a zoom gesture. So just load the 1 big image. Let Lighthouse complain. And before you @ me, USE BETTER IMAGE COMPRESSION LIBRARIES. sharp is NOT image compression; I’m talkin bout the real shit (sqoosh, ImageOptim).
6/ Open source everything you make. Everything you’re allowed to. We need this. The world needs this. If you’re unhappy about the direction some part of webdev is developing in, open source your way out of it. No, you won’t “open source it later.” Start open or it’ll never happen.
7/ Stress over speed. Speed is time. Time is the most valuable resource we have. Choose tools based on speed. Software can be bad just because it’s slower than it needs to be. Throw it away. Rewrite it in Rust (jk don’t rewrite it in Rust lol). Future you will thank you.
8/ Fragmented ecosystems are patterns to encourage, not fret over. It’s in everyone’s best interest if we have too many frameworks and too many languages. It just means we’re exploring more potential paths together. You ever see slow motion of lightning—how it traces out thousands upon thousands of branching paths till it finds the path of least resistance? It’s kinda like that.
9/ Don’t finish everything you start. Life’s too short and if you’re not getting paid, do what makes you happy.
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