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As a tech community, we must treat documentation, marketing, logistics, infrastructure, art, etc. work with as much respect as engineering
Yehuda Katz
51.3K posts
Yehuda Katz
@wycats
@[email protected]
OSS enthusiast and @wykittens's parent. Heroku. Co-author of Extensible Web Manifesto. Front-end developer. @wifelette's husband. he/him
- Front end software development is: - real-time (instant load, 60fps) - distributed, incremental (synchronize remote data as needed) - asynchronous - reactive (react to user actions in realtime) Front end is the hardest kind of dev I do. The folks who do it every day are heroes.
- JavaScript code is much more expensive, byte for byte, than an image, because of the time spent parsing and compiling it. It's possible to parse and compile wasm as fast as it comes over the network, which makes it much more like an image than JavaScript code. Game changer!
- Before creating Handlebars I knew next to nothing about parsers. Same deal. Let your ambitions, not your existing skills, be your guide.Before creating ESLint I knew next to nothing about parsers. Today, I know slightly more than that. Don’t let what you don’t know stop you from trying.
- The most important thing in software is having fun. It sounds indulgent, but it supports a sustainable career *and* creates an environment that's accessible to beginners over time. Fun. Savor it. Prioritize it. Your software will be better for it.
- The thing I find frustrating about the idea that frontend dev is "for juniors" is that nobody would say it about other specializations. Someone might say that it's *better* if a compiler author worked in a more full stack role. They *wouldn't* say "compiler writing is for jrs"
- It feels like StackOverflow has developed a fatal flaw with regard to web content. Almost every popular question has a top-voted and approved answer that is out of date. In most cases, the answer is totally wrong and no decent developer would recommend it anymore.
- We're all learning, all the time. How can you be proud to say that someone doesn't belong simply because they don't yet have a particular piece of knowledge? My pride comes from opening up our craft to anyone who wants to hone it. Exclude people at your peril.If people who don't know you can use a <link> tag can call themselves front-end developers nowadays I'm proud of saying they don't belong in our craft.
- People don't really understand the effort that goes into maintaining an open-source project. But *nobody* understands the effort that goes into *leading* a successful open source project. It's mostly not about committing code. It's mostly about chaos management.
- After playing a little bit with QBasic when I was a kid, I was given a K&R C book. My takeaway: programming is not for me. I didn't look at programming seriously again until I was 23. This article is terrible advice. zeroequalsfalse.press/2017/11/29/c/
- New Years Resolution: when I talk about technologies, I will avoid demeaning the users of those technologies. I will also avoid calling technologies "dead", "dying" or other words meant purely to demoralize users of the technology.
- How to center content in a div. One way. div { display: flex; /* vertical */ align-items: center; /* horizontal */ justify-content: center; } That's it. The other 10 ways don't matter in 2021. We solved the problem. We're done.
- A ton of working software developers are not highly paid.
- PSA: There are a bunch of developers like me and you having a hard day today as Disney+ is launching. I don't know any of them, but I imagine that seeing internet colleagues gleefully passing around articles dunking on them isn't making their day better.
