The online home of Jeremy Keith, an author and web developer living and working in Brighton, England.
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alonso.network/the-recurring-cycle-of-developer-replacement-hype/
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.
An excellent appraisal of the importance of the rule of least power.
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!
“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%.”
Finalising the set list for Friday’s album launch gig with Salter Cane.
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.
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.
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?”.
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.
👏👏👏
Frankly, I’d rather quit my career than live in the future they’re selling. It’s the sheer dystopian drabness of it. Mediocrity as a service.
I tried the tab-completion slot machines; not my cup of tea. I tried image generation and was overcome with literal depression. I don’t want a future as a “prompt artist”.
I’m mostly linking this for what it says, but oh boy, do I love the way it says it with this wonderful HTML web compenent.
Thursday session
goodinternetmagazine.com/close-to-the-metal-web-design-and-the-browser/
It seems like the misguided perception of needing to use complex tools and frameworks to build a website comes from a thinking that web browsers are inherently limited. When, in fact, browsers have evolved to a tremendous degree
I heard you like divs…
AI is, of course, at the center of this moment. It’s a mediocrity machine by default, attempting to bend everything it touches toward a mathematical average. Using extraordinary amounts of resources, it has the ability to create something good enough, a squint-and-it-looks-right simulacrum of normality. If you don’t care, it’s miraculous.
In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.
In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.
When evaluating any technology I understand why it’s important to ask “how might this benefit me” but it’s more important to first ask “how might this harm others”.
Nice to see Clearleft’s browser support policy get a shoutout from Rachel during her Google IO talk.
