Semantic HTML? Optional. Server-side rendering? Rebuilt from scratch. Accessibility? Maybe, if there’s time. Performance? Who cares, when you can save costs by putting loading burdens onto the user’s device, instead of your server?

So gradually, the web became something you had to compile before you could publish. Not because users needed it. But because developers wanted it to feel modern.

Everything’s optimised for developers – and hostile to everyone else.

This isn’t accidental. It’s cultural. We’ve created an industry where complexity is celebrated. Where cleverness is rewarded. Where engineering sophistication is valued more than clarity, usability, or commercial effectiveness.

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But then I think of the New York skyline, The West Cork of the Yankee eyeline

—CMAT, The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station

Thursday session

Soon…

Wednesday session

Making Greek salad for lunch pretty much every day now.

Reading Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

It feels like someone just harvested lumber from a forest I helped grow, and now wants to sell me the furniture they made with it.

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Here’s what the “AI will replace developers” crowd fundamentally misunderstands: code is not an asset—it’s a liability. Every line must be maintained, debugged, secured, and eventually replaced. The real asset is the business capability that code enables. If AI makes...

AI presents design leaders with a quandary, requiring us to tread a fine line between what is acceptable and useful, and what is problematic and harmful.

This document is not a manifesto or an agenda. It is a series of prompts written by design leaders for design leaders, conceived to help us navigate these tricky waters.

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An excellent appraisal of the importance of the rule of least power.

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UX London happened last week. Working on an event is a weird kind of project. You spend all your time and effort on something that is then over in the blink of an eye. I’d been preparing for this all year. 95% of my work happened before the event—curating the line-up, plan...

There are still tickets available for the Salter Cane album launch gig at The Hope And Ruin this Friday, June 20th …and they’re only £8!

https://saltercane.com/tickets

“We’ve stripped React out of our highest-traffic user flows and replaced it with vanilla JavaScript using small, focused libraries for specific needs,” said the CTO of a streaming service. “Our page load times dropped by 60% and our conversion rates improved by 14%.”

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Finalising the set list for Friday’s album launch gig with Salter Cane.

https://saltercane.com/tickets

Wednesday session in Camden

Hosting UX London

Tuesday session in London

I really like the thinking behind this project:

We believe computers should work for people, and dream of a future where computing, like cooking or word processing, is available to everyone. Where you can solve your own small, unique problems with small, unique apps. Where you don’t just rely on mass-market apps made by expert programmers. Where you share home-made little apps with family and friends.

Scrappy is our contribution to this dream.

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The last three trad sessions I played in were in three different countries—Sunday in Cork, Tuesday in Brighton, Wednesday in Amsterdam—lovely tunes each time!

💜

It’s literally three minutes into CSS Day and I’ve already learned about some CSS I didn’t know about.

Wednesday session in Amsterdam

Going to Amsterdam. brb

It feels awfully retrograde to me that the season finalés of both Andor and Dr. Who depict women staying at home to mind the kids while the dudes go off to work.

Tuesday session

The joy came flooding back to me! It turns out browser APIs are really good now.

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Going to Cork, like. brb

In order for principles to truly drive the work and serve as a good framework for the outcomes, they have to be debated, opinionated, and painful.

Yes! Design principles aren’t there to make you feel good; they should provoke arguments.

One of the tests that I’ve developed in thinking through writing down principles, design or otherwise, is to ask the question: “versus what?”.

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Engaging with AI as a technology is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach. It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.

👏👏👏

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