For as long as I’ve been a web developer, the CSS Cascade has been a thorn in my side. I understand how it can be helpful, but the number of times that I’ve been frustrated by it far outweigh the number of times that I’ve thought to myself “hey, this is pretty great”! Does this mean that we should throw it away? Some people certainly think so, and as much as I want to agree, I believe the sweet spot lies somewhere between Functional CSS (see also: Utility Classes) and Presentational based CSS selectors.
JavaScript Fatigue – Everyone’s talking about it, and most of us have felt it in one way or another. While it often feels good to blow off some steam by writing satirical articles about the current state of the JavaScript ecosystem, dwelling on it too much in that light can become frustrating and discouraging for both yourself and for others. Although I’m not the first, I’d like to try to talk about JavaScript Fatigue in a different light.
Have you ever found yourself in a place where you’re having difficulty focussing on work and genuinely being interested in the work that you have in front of you? I’ve definitely been in this place, even recently. It can be incredibly frustrating because of the nature of my work deals with having to meet deadlines, which is really hard to do if you just don’t want to do the work. In the morning I have a ritual where I put on a portion of a podcast and brew my coffee. Luckily for me, this morning’s podcast happened to an episode of Developer Tea that addresses this very subject. Jonathan’s talking points resonated with me so I wanted to reiterate them here.
For most of my life I’ve been more of a content consumer than a content creator. I never saw the point of writing blogs that nobody read, nor did I ever really want to create anything for people to critique and consume. For some reason though, this year I challenged myself to change that.