Things I Like
-
Developer convenience is a very powerful and important force. I wish that progressive enhancement could provide the same level of developer convenience offered by Angular and Ember, but right now, it doesn’t. Instead, its benefits are focused on the end user, often at the expense of the developer.
-
So this is what I try to remember when I’m deep in the muck, and I hope you’ll remember it, too. Somehow, some way, your worst moments feed your best work, and it might well take a decade to see it.
-
In other words, the unfinished is far more valuable than the finished. The un-figured out far more valuable than the figured out.
-
If I met me, but younger, we’d talk about the value of one thing. You have to choose one thing to do for yourself every day. No matter what practice you choose — how fulfilling or meaningful — it will sometimes overwhelm you. Choose something for yourself every day. Do it repeatedly and without fail. If you do something for yourself every day, no matter how many standoffs or negotiations or letdowns you face throughout the day, no one can take that away from you.
-
In our race just to finish, we underestimate the benefits of quitting. I want to come out of the unfinished project closet. I want to consider the benefits of starting.
-
We have a lot of say in who gets a voice and who doesn’t in our community. That’s a huge responsibility and a tremendous amount of power. We need to use it wisely.
-
I want my work and my skills to stand the test of time like my house’s brick foundation. I don’t want my work to become the shitty drop ceilings that get torn out once that trend has come and gone.
-
I’m actually glad the grown-up is dying—we need the space to have versions of adulthood for people who don’t happen to be straight, white, and cis-gendered. I look forward to fewer noun-based versions of adulthood (spouse, house, kids) and more verb-based visions of adulthood. The future is a lot less scary if you believe an adult is someone who wields autonomy, empathy, and responsibility with an even hand.
-
The boring designer realizes that the glory isn’t in putting their personal stamp on everything they touch. In fact, most of the time, it’s about leaving no trace of themselves. The boring designer loves consistency. The boring designer loves a style guide. They love not having to worry about choosing the wrong blue or accidentally introducing a new pattern.
-
This is why at Bocoup our team members only work on one project at a time and the length of a project is measured in weeks. We believe that hourly or even daily accounting of time for programming tasks is not realistic and gets in the way of both productivity and happiness. This does require that we have a lot of trust in our team, which is a really good thing to have for a million other reasons too. In the past we’ve turned down work that required hourly time accounting for this reason. This hasn’t ended up being much of an issue because the industry has been gradually getting more realistic about how programmers work. That means happier programmers and better software.
-
I always end my day or my week knowing what I need to design next. Sometimes I start shitty first drafts late in the afternoon so I have something to work with the next morning. It can be very tempting, when the work is going well, to “just keep going” and stay at your desk late into the evening. That lovely state of flow is so elusive, we don’t want to walk away—and yet we must.
-
It’s easy to get isolated in our not-knowing-ness (it’s fine, just add “words” to the list of things I don’t know), to assume that everyone else must have the answers, must have already figured this out. Sometimes that’s true. More often than not though, we’re all grappling with the same questions.
-
But to be sat amongst a community who do not share your concerns is a terribly alienating experience, especially if the speakers on stage are claiming a we for the room that you do not feel. A greater diversity of speakers and a greater diversity of participants means by definition fewer common experiences and a more complicated we.
-
There are many instances where deadlines are crucial, where getting things done needs to get done. Sometimes saying yes is just the thing that must happen. But just as importantly, most times it is not.
-
It’s nearly impossible for a single parent or even two parents working full time to cook every meal from scratch, planning it beforehand and cleaning it up afterward. This is why many working parents of means employ housekeepers. But if we put this work on women of lower socioeconomic status (as is almost always the case), what about their children? Who cooks and cleans up for them?