Happy Friday, y’all —
Here’s a smattering of things that came my way this week.
✏️ Writes
- DX Audits – A Framework for Developer Advocacy (Kurt Kemple) A framework for tackling product friction by having developer advocates experience common developer workflows, document and report their findings, and surface actionable steps for improvement.
- Four Day Work Week: How and Why We Work Less (Karolina Szczur) The Calibre team trialled a 4-day work week when the pandemic began. They’ve now permanently transitioned to a four day week model. Here they share their reasoning and outcomes behind the shift.
- One size doesn’t fit all: Why personalization is key to your accessibility toolbox (Team Stark) The Twitter design refresh set off a lot of conversation around including personalization in accessibility considerations. Team Stark digs on to how a one-size-fits-all misses the mark, and how we can do better by providing more options.
- Vector? Raster? Why not both! (Zach Leatherman) A little adventure in image optimization and web perf that ends with a mixed vector/raster approach.
🔨 Projects
- Frontend Practice (Kyle Shook) - Flex your frontend skills by recreating real websites.
- So many Rust resources popping up! Chris Biscardi is building Rust Adventure (a series of videos and writing aimed at introducing people from non-C backgrounds to Rust) and Sid Chatterjee is working on Rust for JS Developers (a course specifically designed for JS devs to learn Rust). (Both forthcoming, sign up for updates if interested).
- Learn to Build Your Own Mechanical Keyboard (Cassidy Williams) - Just anecdotally, it seems like interest in mechanical keyboards is growing fast. Cassidy has built them, programmed them, and even designed mass-produced keycap sets. She’s working on an email course that will teach you the ins and outs. (Forthcoming, sign up for updates if interested).
Lots of exciting forthcoming projects this week!
🎤 Talks + Events
- Jamstack Conf 2021 - “Join 20,000+ web developers to learn how it started, how it’s going, and what’s next!” (Oct 6-7, 2021).
- How To Find, Fix, And Prevent Accessibility Issues - A free two-day workshop introducing accessibility testing, delivered by Deque through Smashing Magazine. (Sept 14-15, 2021).
💬 Tweets
If you think research is expensive or it takes a long time, just wait til you see what it’s like building products without it.
What I’ve learned during this pandemic is that it’s possible to burn out pretty darn hard while doing v little and just trying to survive
🦄 Random
- fishdraw - Fun Glitch project – procedurally generated fish drawings.
- how i experience web today - Yep. Pretty much.
🌵 Personal
- Almost exactly two years ago, I tweeted that I had bought the a11y.coffee domain, and committed to build something with hit. My former co-worker Hashim found that old tweet, and made my day.
- Slowly strolling through Just JavaScript and really enjoying it. Great as an experienced JS dev, but can’t help but imagine how helpful this would have been to have in the early days.
- These two tweets pretty much capture my eternal struggle as a human:
do you ever leave a social situation and you’re just like mmm that was not my best work
Does anyone else feel like they are a lazy perfectionist with ADHD and chronic fatigue who is pretty chill besides the occasional panic attack and loves their friends but hates people?
On that note! Have a great weekend, y’all,