Ross's Micro Blog

Today will also require careful management of sugar/caffeine levels. Will be very easy to overdo it.

Yes, I’m middle-aged and these are the things I think about now when I’m socialising. 😂

I’m travelling to London today to… err… socialise with people in real life?!

Will I remember how?

Tips/advice?

Best worst advice wins.

This is a great post. I feel so much of senior dev woe!

Falsehoods Junior Developers believe about becoming Senior https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/falsehoods-junior-developers-believe-about-becoming-senior/

My friend Tim is running a workshop. He’s really very smart, has a TON of experience, and he’s entertaining too:

“I'm running a workshop on how to clean a hacked #WordPress Site, it's on the 21st March and I hope I can tempt you to come! I'm excited, I think I have managed to get the balance between technical and accessible, so that it genuinely is useful to everyone.”

https://timnash.co.uk/workshop/

Hang on… ChatGPT’s voice is terrible at reading out long strings of digits? What?!

(Sound on…)

@gilest Hello fellow Wiltshire person! I seem to follow you already and I feel like we’ve interacted before. But hello again! Thanks for following.

Another week, another single-page web app gets spun up. These are the new domain names. 😂

This one is secret for now. But real fun to make.

Figuring out in-browser background removal with JS/CSS. Plus turning HTML into images to print.

Cool stuff!

I really need to bookmark my open tabs! 😬

US Politics + “Oh my eyes!” design.

---

Even if you thought Trump was a good politician, would you really look at this and think you’d want to spend $400 on them?

Keep scrolling too… there’s a VERY special offer at the bottom.

https://gettrumpsneakers.com/

Here it is then: My manifesto for small, static web apps.

If you wish to comment/reply on this, please read the intro on what a manifesto is before you do.

https://rosswintle.uk/2024/02/a-manifesto-for-small-static-web-apps/

With that in mind the summary is:

– Static first/only
– No login
– Don't store user data
– Use the smallest JS library possible
– Use web standards as much as possible
– Use simple build steps that won't break
– “Done” is a goal
– Zero-maintenance (and easy maintenance) is a goal
– Don’t minify
– Be accessible

I try hard not to dunk on WordPress because I still love it, for all its flaws.

But when patterns first arrived I knew it was the wrong model.

And now we’re at what they should have been. But because it’s built on the wrong legacy it’s “Synced Pattern Overrides” 😬

Surely I wasn’t the only one that (fore)saw this?

Anyway, here’s the video…

https://youtu.be/VGw3aNIwTNw

In the newsletter that linked me to this video I also read:

“Gutenberg meets the needs of fewer than half of respondents”

🧐

I’m watching Matt Medeiros demonstrate “Synced Pattern Overrides” in WordPress 6.5 and wondering “How on earth did we get here?”

The feature, like the name, is so complicated.

And it’s complicated because the original model of patterns was bad.

Patterns should always have been synced. And they should have been called “Components”, which is what everyone else on the web calls this concept.

They should have default content.

That’s it. That’s all that was needed.

Scrap patterns. Start again.

Yay! I got the Bandle in one!! (I’m not sure if this is a good thing)

Bandle #549 1/6
🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜

Started writing my small, static web apps manifesto. And it makes me realise why I love this approach: everything is about removing complexity.

– Hosting is simple
– Maintenance is simple
– Many complex problems just don’t exist (authentication, data protection)

And the manifesto “articles” all combine with each other to achieve this.

🤩

… It does kinda suggest the antidote though:

“veteran meteorologists would make weather forecasts first by looking at the data and forming an expert judgement; only then would they look at the computerised forecast to see if the computer had spotted anything that they had missed. (Typically, the answer was no.) By making their manual forecast first, these veterans kept their skills sharp”

Knowing – and practicing- the basics is as important as ever!

I’m really enjoying reading Tim Harford’s “Messy – How to be creative and resilient in a tidy-minded world”

It’s a book from 2016, but contains some very relevant wisdom on automation:

“Systems that supplant, not support, human decision-making are everywhere. We worry that the robots are taking our jobs, but just as common a problem is that the robots are taking our judgement.”

Next I plan to write a Manifesto for simple, static web apps!

This is my soapbox now!