Published
Weekend Reading — Does this bring me joy?
Design Objective
Michael Bolton Hits nail on the head:
- In most user stories, nobody is ever interrupted, distracted, naive, confused, under pressure, impatient, disabled, outside of wireless access. Nobody makes human mistakes. Nobody closes the damned laptop lid. The characters in user stories might as well be drones, robots.
Web-end
Kent C. Dodds These are not alternative fonts, they're mathematical symbols abused to make the text look different. Play the video Kent prepared, to hear what this text really sounds like.
You 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 it's 𝒸𝓊𝓉ℯ to 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 your tweets and usernames 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖆𝖞. But have you 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙙 to what it 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 with assistive technologies like 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻?
The Flexbox Holy Albatross Make Flexbox switch between multiple and single column layouts, without media queries or JavaScript. CSS tricks I could never have imagined.
Nicole Sullivan For real. We don't even need to convince, FOMO will do the convincing.
Unpopular opinion: CSS and HTML need to increment their version numbers again so we can convince business to invest in these technologies. 😂
Lines of Code
This week we apply the KonMari method to our messy codebase, learn to let go, and tidy up. (Yes, I binge watched all the episodes, as one does)
As you go through every line of code, you should be asking, does this bring me joy?
If not, tell that line of code 'Thank you for being in my life' - then toss it in the garbage along with its thousands of friends.
Before you start refactoring, copy all the code into one big file and just look at it in one place.
Leave the most sentimental lines of code for last.
Architectural
JBD This:
Storage is the single hardest problem in our domain. Storage related tradeoffs are sometimes the hardest tradeoffs to tackle. Storage decisions often impact every other design decision. I don't know why we are acting like it ain't so.
Tom Eastman From a thread about the latest Ethereum incident, and relevant in so many contexts:
Douglas Adams, in 1992, describing the blockchain:
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
Devoops
Konmari, but for PagerDuty. "I thank this alert for teaching me that we don't need to alert on things like this. Also this alert did not spark joy."
Locked Doors
Alan Feuer Jealousy is the ultimate vulnerability:
A jaw-dropping twist this morning to the story of the Colombian IT guy who helped the FBI crack El Chapo's encrypted comms network.
He also helped the feds tap the kingpin's texts w/his wiife, Emma Coronel, taking us deep into the intimacies (and crimes) of their marriage.
@notdan Yes. Also, I'm Californian and we're soft like that.
Being able to turn the heater on from bed is totally worth getting hacked.
None of the Above
Kevin Liao "2019 is still young but nominating this for press conference prop of the year"
dream ghoul Life hack:
in college we named our intramural softball team “NO GAME SCHEDULED” because if the other team didn’t show up they lost their league deposit and
forfeited. it worked several times. everyone hated us and nothing as cool as that has happened to me since.
A Blade Runner sequel where Deckard just walks around the city trying different ramen joints
Harvey Newman "A 3D printed light projected animation. Proof that there's always new ways to animate everything."
“I came, I saw, I left early.” A lifestyle.
If you can't say anything nice¹
¹Say it in a footnote.
Rotarywing "Unbelievable flying and landing at that slope to rescue an injured skier
By French mountain police 👏"