Things I Like
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Emphasis mine, because I’m not sure I know of a design system that operates in a holistic way. Does the system you work with allow you to control the process of your work, to make situational decisions? Or is it simply a set of rules you have to follow?
There was a rash of blogging recently about systems and working within them and how you work within them and are they really just like a factory and we just follow the line to get the components created? I found Ethan's piece the most interesting, to be honest, because I find bringing up Franklin's thoughts on technology an interesting new twist on thinking about them. To be sure, systems are not perfect, and I think we have a long way to go to figure out how to do them well, but I find the thinking about all this worthwhile and interesting.
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The Iowa disaster is a sign that our economic structures are breaking down, that private enterprise has become a shell game, where who you know matters more than what you can do. The bullshit economy has bled over into politics, with the perfect president but also the perfect amount of grifting and consultant corruption and unbridled tech optimism. This has long been part of politics—anything with that much money sloshing around will invite a little corruption—but the combination of political grift, the ardor for public-private partnerships, and the triumph of ambition over talent has created a fetid stew.
The best thing I've read about how much we're living in a strange age that I fear will only get stranger before it gets better.
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It helps to know that people were "uncovering better ways of developing software" long before the Agile Manifesto was written, because it puts it into context. It enables us to understand the constitutional limitations and consider how to grow beyond them.
I read this piece a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it quite a bit ever since. I work in a team that does agile with sprints, stand ups, and all the rest. But I'm starting to question if it really works, do we get more done? Does it make us more productive and encourage communication. I'll be honest and say that I'm not really sure about that. And it makes me think about some posts I've read recently about how software making is becoming more like working in a factory. This I can relate to in many ways.
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I just just believe that an economy in which people own the means of production and the stuff they produce would be one that’d be a good bit better than the one we have now. What if that $5 billion worth of worth just went back to the workers at Chick-Fil-A because they own the company? Why don’t they deserve instead of some guys whose dad started the company?
I know, I know, I just linked to Thornton a while ago, but gah, he's writing some really amazing things. As a person who was heavily involved in the evangelical church who walked away for many of the reasons he talks about in this piece, I'm intrigued. Finding someone who is in the church but not what you see in the media can be hard and I'm immensely glad that there is someone like Thornton saying the things he's saying.
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I don’t think it’s a coincidence they’re choosing this point in history to act so boldly, so aggressively. These companies are keenly aware of the current NLRB’s pro-business tilt, and are probably confident that it would rule in their favor.
A sobering round up of the year in tech and activism from Ethan, but worth reading to see all that has gone on. There is hope here, I believe in hope, hope is an active thing, not a wishful thing and I'm grateful for all the folks working so hard to help make our industry better.
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Start a damn blog. People might give you shit for what you say on it on twitter, but you can ignore them. Only pay attention to folks that take the time to write a blog. ‘In medium’ responses. Blogs already have nearly 2 decades of grammar and expectations of what a blog is and can be. In addition to commentary and essays, you can just write about a book you read or TV show you watched. They are far more personal in many ways than an instagram feed dedicated to your amazing lunch could ever be. I post photos of food I’ve eaten here all the time.
I love seeing how many people are blogging again and using RSS and talking about these things. I may not write as much as I'd like to on this site of mine, but I do keep track of a lot of other things that are important to me. Maybe 2020 will be when I write a bit more as well.
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You’re just not going to survive very long in America being an idealistic fluffy artist if you’re not also watching your back. I think one of the most valuable things I learned very early on was simply how to say “no.” That probably sounds a little obvious but it’s not in everyone’s nature, especially when you’re young and there’s some sort of vague opportunity in front of you. Your human instinct is to always want to be agreeable and to be liked, and to say “yes” to whatever’s being offered. When you’re young, you feel grateful and lucky that anyone is even paying attention to you at all. But what a powerful thing to be able to say “no.” It’s one of the first steps toward realizing your worth.
There are a lot of really lovely things in the interview and I absolutely adore his drawing style.
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I find the beauty of being able to make use of the global, themed, and component level design decisions by compiling them into various formats (that essentially become CSS) and that gives us more power in authoring components.
I don't often link to things related to my work, but I'm really intrigued by design tokens and how to do a system for a large scale platform that needs to serve multiple brands and have them all looking and feeling like their own thing. I wonder why that is?
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Putting the blame on the users, saying «they can complete the transaction on another device», is a lazy mindset. And one that will hurt your bottom line. They will not complete the task on another device. They will leave for good.
A super well done article about why you should support all browsers and how it's not nearly as hard as you think it is.
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The benefit of using tokens that way, beyond developers having an easier time using it, is that if brand changes again or there’s requirement to theme the system, you can simply replace the
brand.jsonwith a different file and all the components will be regenerated.I'm watching a system being created at work and the hard part is the tokens and how to get them to work with all the various moving pieces. This is an interesting read on that very thing.
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With design systems work there is always more to be done and barely any time to sit back and see all the improvements that your team has made. So the other nice thing about the newsletter is that once the announcements are out there in public it all starts to feel a bit more complete. It’s wonderful to see folks noticing the work that ships and that is piece by piece making their lives easier and more efficient in the long run.
I really love this idea, not just for being able to communicate out to a broader team about what your design system team is doing, but for the record it gives you of the accomplishments. I find that taking time to write about or even talk about all the things you've done is helpful to gain perspective and see all that you've accomplished on a project.
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All of this attention eating is relatively new. It is, as I said above, largely reliant on the smartphones in our pockets. The rise of attention monsters and this scale of attention consumption and lopsided contracts is one of many unintended consequences of the last ten years of internet growth and pocket supercomputers.
I always enjoy Mod's writing about reading and books and this piece is no different. And every time I read his work I think about how I'm spending my time. I'm reading more and more these days and one of the main reasons is that I'm putting away devices more and more.
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I think the difference between a junior and senior front-end developer isn't in their understanding or familiarity with a particular tech stack, toolchain, or whether they can write flawless code. Instead, it all comes down to this: how they push back against bad ideas.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a senior developer senior and I think Robin hit the nail on the head here. Well done Robin!
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When so many people have long or unreliable work hours, or worse, long and unreliable work hours, the effects ripple far and wide. Families pay the steepest price. Erratic hours can push parents—usually mothers—out of the labor force. A body of research suggests that children whose parents work odd or long hours are more likely to evince behavioral or cognitive problems, or be obese. Even parents who can afford nannies or extended day care are hard-pressed to provide thoughtful attention to their kids when work keeps them at their desks well past the dinner hour.
I've been reading a lot lately about how our systems make our lives hard, how work is creeping in, how the demand to always profit more and more means that workers get the short end of the stick. This article points to some of those things, some of the ways in which higher profits are held above treating workers decently.
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It isn’t that he is revered but not followed so much as he is revered because he is not followed—because remembering him as a nice man is easier than thinking of him as a demanding one. He spoke most clearly through his example, but our culture consoles itself with the simple fact that he once existed. There is no use asking further questions of him, only of ourselves. We know what Mister Rogers would do, but even now we don’t know what to do with the lessons of Mister Rogers.
There's a lot in this piece and I'm still chewing over many of the things I read, especially the parts about civility, there are so many ways to use it to silence people, but I think Junod is using it in a different way. Either way, an interesting take on Mr. Rogers legacy and the new film that's coming out.