• Posted on

    HTML and Typescript.

    Mandy Michael uses a brilliant analogy to explain why developers must get to know the HTML elements available to them and use the appropriate one for their content.

    In TypeScript, we have the concept of an any type. When you assign a type of any it means the content can be anything. […] But if everything is typed as any then you lose the benefits of the language.

    This is the same with HTML. If you use the <div> everywhere, you aren’t making the most of language. Because of this it’s important that you actively choose what the right element is and don’t just use the default <div>.

    This reminded me of the following quote by Jen Simmons from their HTML course:

    HTML syntax itself is fairly simple. The trickier part is knowing which tags to use when.

    (Discovered via Jeremy Keith)

  • Posted on

    View transitions: Handling aspect ratio changes

    To be honest, I had a tough time understanding this article completely. But that is a me problem because I think I don’t have the right mental model for view transitions yet. Nevertheless, I’m sure this article will be super helpful someday in the future.

  • Posted on

    Enrique Peñalosa: Why buses represent democracy in action - YouTube

    Enrique Peñalosa on how to build cities that prioritise human beings over cars and guarantee a citizen’s right to safe mobility.

    In my opinion, the following bit at the start of the video certainly holds true for India:

    The great inequality in developing countries makes it difficult to see, for example, that in terms of transport, an advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport or bicycles.

  • Posted on

    The Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges | Quanta Magazine

    To see how this unfolds, take the perspective of an ant on the march. When it comes to a gap in its path, it slows down. The rest of the colony, still barreling along at 12 centimeters per second, comes trampling over its back. At this point, two simple rules kick in.

    The first tells the ant that when it feels other ants walking on its back, it should freeze. “As long as someone walks over you, you stay put,” Garnier said.

    This same process repeats in the other ants: They step over the first ant, but — uh-oh — the gap is still there, so the next ant in line slows, gets trampled and freezes in place. In this way, the ants build a bridge long enough to span whatever gap is in front of them. The trailing ants in the colony then walk over it.

    (Discovered via kottke.org)

  • Posted on

    Astro RSS MDX

    I love Astro. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to render the entire post content in my RSS feeds correctly. This article by Donnie D’Amato has been a lifesaver in this regard.

  • Posted on

    Adactio: Journal—Mind set

    Ah! Good old Jeremy Keith, insightful and funny.

    If I really want to change someone’s mind, then I need to make the effort to first understand their mind. That’s going to be far more productive than declaring that my own mind is made up. After all, if I show no willingness to consider alternative viewpoints, why should they?

    There’s an old saying that before criticising someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. I’m going to try to put that into practice, and not for the two obvious reasons:

    1. If we still disagree, now we’re a mile away from each other, and
    2. I’ve got their shoes.

  • Posted on

    Browsing the web - Learn web development | MDN

    I really like this explanation of what happens in between the user entering a web address into the browser and the browser displaying the result.

    1. The web browser requests the resource you want to access from the web server it is stored on.
    2. If the request is successful, the web server sends a response back to the web browser containing the requested resource.
    3. In some cases, the requested resource will then fire off more requests, which will result in more responses.
    4. When all of the resources have been requested, the web browser parses and renders them as required, before displaying the result to the user.

  • Posted on

    Missed Connections - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

    Jim Nielsen on the personal connections formed on the internet.

    You could search the world and find someone who saw what you see, felt what you feel, went through what you’re going through.

    And how these connections are increasingly being lost when we prompt an impersonal LLM instead.

  • Posted on

    Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe - YouTube

    I love this bit from the video where Jason quotes Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia:

    A developed country is not where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.

    But why is it important that wealthy people take public transportation? Because, as Jason mentions,

    […] for better or for worse, these people are likely to have the power and political influence to demand efficient service.

  • Posted on

    Just Build Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

    Jim Nielsen uses his experience with golf as a metaphor to explain that the key to success in web development comes from actual practice — building websites — rather than obsessing over what tools, frameworks and technologies others are using.