Writing

Do more of what’s working and less of what isn’t

How do you know when to call it quits on an experiment? I’m dialing back on some of mine to get back some time for other projects.

Turning simple shapes into complex shapes

SVGs are math that looks unnecessarily complicated. Let me walk you through how to build a complex icon from a few circles and lines.

Getting sprint retrospectives right is hard work

Sprint retrospectives are a waste of time only if we use them as Weekly Complaining Corner. We can me them more fun AND meaningful at the same time.

Practical APIs for your next tech exploration

When you’re trying a new technology, you can use one of these APIs for the basis of your experiments. They let you build something fun at the same time.

Which is it, cookies or no cookies?

We still need to show a cookie notice for YouTube’s nocookie embed script, because it sets a cookie as soon as a visitor starts playing a video.

Your notes could be products

You definitely have at least a few products in you. The collection of tips and tricks you keep for yourself could be valuable to others as well.

When the law makes you pivot

Shortly before finishing it, I had to change direction on my last side project. Had I proceeded with the original idea, I would have entered a legal gray area.

Just enough analytics

When we need to gather statistics or other logs from our projects, we don’t always need to use full, privacy-invading analytics solutions.

Keep your links and SEO when moving domains

When changing from one domain name to another, we can use redirects to keep all existing links in place and avoid a dip in search engine rankings.

How to flush Open Graph previews on social networks

Sites like Twitter and LinkedIn cache the preview image that appear when sharing links. We can clear that cache to have them pick up new versions faster.

When you know too much to be helpful

Once you speak the language experts in your field use every day, it becomes harder to remember what it was like to not know what you know now.

What a “target audience” could look like

Building for everybody is as bad as building for nobody. By defining an audience, we can focus on activities that support those we want to help.

Business Bootstrapping

The end of annoying JavaScript imports

Instead of navigating many layers of directories when importing files, we can use aliases that cover that error-prone part for us.

The Seinfeld approach to content creation

Without a specified target audience in mind, the content we create ends up being for nobody instead of being for everyone.

Fonts that make you go “agh!iIl1”

This nonsense test string reveals some of the main differences when comparing typefaces, like their weight and related characteristics.

Get better at design by breaking some designs

If good artists copy and great artists steal, why shouldn’t new artists destroy? Break some designs to learn the details that make them work.

The constraints behind consistent icons

As I am drawing many more icons for my upcoming set, I follow a few constraints to ensure they all look like they belong together.

Project management Bootstrapping

Don’t invent this here

Now that I am working on a product that I will sell, the decision between what I can reasonably build myself takes on a new shape.

Introducing Lovelicons

I am working on a set of 200+ icons that will be free for personal use. The paid version will include benefits that I have not defined yet.

How to build that work schedule

Building a work schedule helps us minimize distractions and focus on what is important. Follow these instructions to build one for yourself.

Giving every minute a job

Splitting a day that would otherwise be “eight hours of work, some of them productive” into dedicated blocks helps maximize the value of these hours.

I finally understand “many small functions”

Writing many small functions instead of a few large ones is common wisdom. It took a book from the 90s for me to understand why that’s better.

Running a static site saved me from getting hacked

When I looked at my site’s analytics for the first time in forever, I found that someone ran a script against it to find known vulnerabilities.

Protect your SEO when crossposting

By setting canonical links on posts shared on services like dev.to, Hashnode, and Medium, you can start building a SEO reputation for your own domain.

The easiest way to build a Dark Mode

Media queries are essential for doing Responsive Design. They can test for many features beyond browser width. We can use one of them to build a dark mode.

I published my first video tutorials!

After writing on my blog and newsletter, I’m adding a new medium to my rotation. I’m taking some of my content and recording videos for it.

Get more value from your git log

We can customize the look of our git log to get more value out of fewer lines. In this issue, I walk you through how we can build a prettier log step by step.

Git

How to pick your next project

A flat todo list helps us get projects done, but it doesn’t help us decide what project to work on next.

This newsletter goes to 13 people

I have not done any marketing for this newsletter at all, and it shows. It’s about time I change something about that.

How the poop emoji broke my website

A few emoji included in a font are responsible for Firefox not showing syntax highlighting in my code snippets.

The main branch in git

There was never a technical reason for us to call the source of truth “master” in Git. We can rename it to “main” or any other term in a few minutes.

Memorizing a shuffled deck of cards

Distractions and the internet have conditioned us to do shallow work. To engage in Deep Work, we need to learn how to concentrate again.

Habits Learning

A very relaxing refactoring

Refactoring old code shows you how much you have grown since you wrote it. Sometimes, that’s just the boost you need to unlock creativity.

GDPR applies to you as well

Running Google Analytics is the most obvious reason for showing a consent form to visitors. There are many less obvious ones you also need consent for.

Join me for Hacktoberfest

Every October, DigitalOcean celebrates the open source community by running Hacktoberfest. Let’s code a few things together this month.

The global .gitignore

Instead of ignoring the same files specific to your machine in every project, exclude them globally once for all your projects.

End of an era

Moment.js is now a legacy project. While you can keep using it, these other projects might be better fits for you.

We’re skipping our shiny features

“Being busy” is not a good measure of progress. By focusing on what creates real value, we can make good use of our limited time.

My design turned out worse than I thought

What looks good in a design tool doesn’t necessarily look good in a browser. Working in both at the same time helps you catch those mistakes early.

Tired of learning by building todo-apps?

Tutorials often default to todo-apps. These twists on that idea help you dig into how the framework you’re learning really works.

Awesome creator podcasts

The format of “two hosts talking about what is going on in their businesses” is fascinating. Know any others like the ones in this list?

Podcasts Bootstrapping

Free alternatives to FontAwesome

A coherent and high quality icon set can level up a design. FontAwesome is good, but there are alternatives.

Books for getting better at design

Design is not only about visuals. Start here to take your first steps into becoming a better designer.

Design Learning

Three tools to up your productivity

Consolidate many tools into few tools and automate what you can. These three help me stay productive.

I am changing my newsletter

I have not found the best format for this newsletter yet. I’ll try a few different ones to see what works best for my readers.

Bootstrapping

JavaScript sorts arrays weird

By default, an array of numbers will not be sorted numerically. To avoid unexpected results, we can tell it how to sort an array.

The iPad got the best pointer

Apple is adding mouse support to iPadOS. The thinking that went into the UX of the iPad’s new pointer is a fascinating evening watch.

Fat marker sketches are the better mockups

Before we spend too much time on the details, we need to figure out the overall structure of a design.

These tips are fire.

The bite-sized tips I started sharing on Twitter show how code can be improved gradually. You can read them all on this site now.

Enthusiasm does not mean priority

One of the harder parts of product development is knowing what to focus on. Your latest cool idea might not need immediate attention.

Offsetting a low salary

A good job is not defined by salary alone. There are other things you can look for in a potential position.

Work from home Lifestyle design

Back to normal?

Quarantine has showed us what work could look like going forward. Let’s reconsider how we work instead of urgently wanting to go “back to normal”.

“Before we start building this…”

Double-check you’re working on the right things by asking if the solution helps you solve important problems.

Project management

Project management Agile Scrum

Delete your backlog

A backlog full of tasks you don’t ever intend to do only weighs you down. Saying no to tasks allows us to focus on what is important.

Poor man’s debugging, but cooler

Annoyed with how browsers log variables to the console? We can access and do more useful things with them.

Picking what to learn

Options are good but distracting. By starting with an end in mind, we can find out what the best next thing to learn is.

Writing code for others to read

Clever code isn’t always the most readable. Especially when working in teams, readability has to come first.

Evolution, not revolution

The latest version of my website is an improvement over the previous one, not a completely different thing.

Serving WebP images

Web servers can send different files to browsers based on headers in a request. Knowing this, we can send WebP-files only to browsers that support them.

Idle times

You’re probably working longer hours than normal during quarantine. Even when working from home, it is okay and important to take breaks.

How to understand any codebase

Treat existing codebases as a blackbox. Take small pieces and write tests for them to understand a project’s inner workings step by step.

How to write legacy code

No code starts out as unmaintainable legacy we don’t dare to change. All codebases end up there because of a lot of small decisions like these examples.

Staying sane in the homeoffice

Separate “work” and “home” when working from home to not go crazy during quarantine. Take breaks and talk to other people, as you would in an office.

Questions to ask in job interviews

Job interviews are tests for both sides. Use them to figure out if the company you are applying to is a place you really want to work at.

Progressive enhancement with @supports (video)

With @supports, we can start using features that will come to CSS soon in supporting browsers today.

CSS Design Accessibility

Negativity in retrospectives

Retrospectives that end after letting everybody complain are a waste of time. Turn that frown upside down for a better result.

Role models

If you have been working somewhere for a while, others are likely looking to you for guidance and leadership.

A better keyboard layout for programming

The US keyboard layout puts many of the symbols we need a lot when coding on their own dedicated keys.

Dealing with broken streaks

Streaks limit us to short-term thinking, yet we can only see long-term effects in retrospect. It’s okay to break a streak along that way.

Habits

Texting faster

iOS 13 now has a built-in swipe keyboard called “QuickPath” that is much faster than typing individual letters.

Bookmarking the greats

By looking at what others have done before us, we can find combinations of their ideas that work for us.

Start building an audience today

ConvertKit recently introduced a new free tier that makes it easier than ever to get started building an audience.

Find your community

No matter what you are passionate about, there is a vibrant community out there where you can exchange ideas with likeminded people.

How to split arrays into equal-sized chunks

JavaScript does not provide a function to split arrays into several smaller arrays. Let’s build one ourselves.

JavaScript

Declutter those bytes

Getting rid of projects and plans that we will not get back to frees up mental space for things that excite us.

SMART

A good goal is one that makes it easy to follow through. The SMART criteria help us in setting better goals.

Recharge

2019 is almost over, and I am looking forward to a few weeks of vacation. There are always more things to learn or to work on. All of that can wait.

How do you eat an elephant?

Big goals take a long time to achieve. By taking many small steps in the right direction, we can get closer and closer to them without losing motivation.

Unexpected usecases

I had my expectations of how software is used challenged last week when talking to the CTO of a med-tech startup.

CSS that has a tail wind

In utility-first CSS, we do not limit ourselves to single classes. Instead, we use many small classes that each add small pieces of styling.

Shaping up

While Scrum works well for many teams, it’s not for everybody. Basecamp’s Shape Up is an alternative that might work better for you.

Writing utility-first CSS with Sass

In utility-first CSS, many classes are very similar. We can auto-generate many of them using maps and loops in Sass.

CSS Sass

Stress-test your layouts in disco mode

Talking about mobile-, tablet- and desktop-layouts worked well when the lines between those classes were well-defined.

Use dad jokes to get better at design

We can design better pages and screens if we use real data when creating our mockups. I released a Sketch-plugin that replaces texts with dad jokes.

Design with ugly data

Many mockups break when we replace their lorem ipsum with real data. By using imperfect images and texts in them, we can design more robust layouts.

The Inter typeface family

Variable fonts are about to fix some of the performance issues caused by adding many custom fonts to our sites.

What do you not have time for?

I have not met anyone that never said “I don’t have time for that”. So many of us are “too busy” to do the things we really care about.

Teamwork Conflict resolution

Is this a hill you want to die on?

There are disagreements in all teams about what we build and how we build it. Given several options, we need to understand each of their effects.

Write like Hemingway

Writing is best when it is easily understood by readers. Everything I write goes through an extensive editing phase to improve its readability.

As a User Story

Adding a single sentence to our tickets helps us focus on what is important. Let’s explore what goes into a good user story.

Business Agile Scrum

Shipped is better than perfect [content preview]

Don’t let perfectionism keep you from shipping things. Release (too) early, then clean it up after you got some real feedback on it.

What CAN you do?

My wife and I were supposed to relax on Mallorca right now. Our trip was cancelled less than 24 hours before our flight was supposed to take off.

Do Not Track, maybe

To opt out of tracking scripts on websites, you can set the “Do Not Track”-setting in your browser. Unfortunately, websites are not required to honor it.

Tracking Privacy

Drawing sweet icons for you

I am often creating custom icons for my projects. Because many share a similar style, I will assemble them into a free icon pack.

How to go from Junior to Senior Developer

In software development, seniority has nothing to do with age. When can someone be considered “senior”?

Career

JavaScript’s reduce, every, and some

The array functions are great for all kinds of problems. But what happens when you forget to specify reduce’s second parameter?

JavaScript

What do I know?

You know a lot of things others don’t. Help them by sharing what you know, no matter how easy or obvious you might think it is.

Education Blogging

What to consider when picking a library or plugin

How do we decide between hundreds of libraries? When does it make sense to build your own version instead?

Software architecture

Nothing is ever “not bad”

Camouflaged as a pleasantry, we can show appreciation much more effectively than through using “that’s not bad”.

Language hacks

The benefits of colocating unit tests

Grouping unit tests and the code they test makes maintenance easier than it is when we keep them in separate directories.

Software architecture

On trends in design

Trends make defining a product’s visual appearance easier, but they also make it harder for you to stand out.

Make your time count

When working in technology, we can do a great many things. Some of them are absolutely not worth doing.

Inspiration

Drop the “should”

The word “should” is often completely unnecessary. Avoiding it makes your language more direct and assertive.

Language hacks

Equality Software architecture

Your API might be sexist

Just as gender is not “true” or “false”, Boolean values are not appropriate for situations in which we assume only two options exist.

How to name color-variables in Sass

Color variables defined with CSS preprocessors are easier to manage if we map them to semantic names first.

CSS Sass

Writing BEM-style CSS with Sass

The &-operator in Sass can greatly reduce the typing work required when using BEM in your stylesheets.

CSS Sass

grunt-contrib-sass and Node.js 0.10.8

The current versions of Node.js and grunt-contrib-sass don’t work together. Downgrade Node.js to an earlier version to avoid the issue.

Insights of a new screencaster

I recently published my first screencasts on programming. In the process, I learned a few first things about creating info products.

Education

Debunking whitewashed exam statistics

Looking at the official statistics of a recent exam, the numbers aren’t as positive as they are made out to be.

Education

Education Functional programming

Screencasts on Standard ML in German

A well-intentioned but ultimately unfair move by a lecture’s organizers inspired me to record a number of screencasts on functional programming.

Why students fail entry-level programming exams

The common approach to teaching development is rarely tailored to newcomers, which results in high failure and dropout rates.

Education

Writing high-performance CSS

Aside from the established best practices for reducing load times, a few things that can be done to stylesheets to make browsers render pages faster.

Understanding CSS hierarchy-matching

Understanding the concept behind how browsers match CSS-selectors and HTML helps us write better stylesheets.

macOS Functional programming

SML/NJ 110.74 on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

After installing SML/NJ on OS X with Homebrew, you still need to make a few manual changes to make them play together nicely.

macOS Functional programming

Painless installation of SML on OS X

Installing SML/NJ on OS X manually is difficult and annoying. Homebrew enables a much easier hassle- and clutter-free installation.

On lazy journalism

I was inappropriately quoted on the death of a former colleague after an inconsiderate tweet was unfortunately picked up by journalists.

Rant