Fathom this!

content-visibility: the new CSS property that boosts your rendering performance

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:28:22 +0200

content-visibility: the new CSS property that boosts your rendering performance.

I'd Echo that

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:11:06 +0200

That Thing’s portfolio write-up of their I’d Echo that campaign for Echo.

Why is 11am + 1 hour == 12:00pm?

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 08:46:47 +0200

I can never remember if noon is 12pm or 12am. I’ve always ascribed this to having grown up in Finland, where we use 24-hour clock. But it’s actually not that unreasonable to be confused, as this brilliant StackExchange answer explains. I came across this while re-reading Zach Holman’s UTC is enough for everyone, right?.

Company name causes XSS damage

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 17:40:30 +0200

The Guardian: Company forced to change name that could be used to hack websites. The company’s name originally was ""><SCRIPT SRC=HTTPS://MJT.XSS.HT> LTD.

Anderson's Law on complexity

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 17:50:43 +0200

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.” — Poul Anderson. Also (incorrectly) dubbed Anderson’s Law.

Pragmatic engineer: Software engineering promotions

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 15:23:24 +0200

Software engineering promotions: advice to get to that next level. A nice overview of how to think about promotions. I came across this in my research to define Echo’s principal engineer level.

“Typically, being promoted up to the senior level is mostly based on gaining skills, demonstrating those, and delivering impact. However, above the senior engineer level, other factors come into play. … For example, your team might be busy shipping small, incremental features, that have little complexity, but decent business value. You almost certainly won’t be promoted beyond the senior level by just doing great work here.”

Spotify doesn’t use “the Spotify model” and neither should you

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Sun, 31 May 2020 16:24:28 +0200

Jeremiah Lee: Failed #SquadGoals — Spotify doesn’t use “the Spotify model” and neither should you.

GDS Design Principles

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 08 May 2020 10:13:52 +0200

GDS’s Design Principles are still the gold standard.

Three tips on how to persuade people to change their behavior

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 05 May 2020 20:10:33 +0200

HBR: How to persuade people to change their behavior.

Highlight a gap — point out where someone might have inconsistencies in “their thoughts and actions, or between what they might recommend for others versus do themselves”
Pose questions — rather than statements (“junk food makes you fat”), pose a question: “do you think junk food is good for you?”
Ask for less

A conspiracy to kill IE6

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 01 May 2020 22:03:40 +0200

Chris Zacharias: A conspiracy to kill IE6. I love this story from the history of the browser wars. The post reminds me of the old blog post by Rands on spotting the culture of a company. As a web developer who lived through years and generations of browsers, I do sometimes wonder if I don’t mourn — at least a little — the obsolescence of all my hard-won knowledge of browser hacks and quirks.

Meet the health tech apps supporting the NHS during Covid-19

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 20:49:57 +0200

Evening Standard: Meet the health tech apps supporting the NHS during Covid-19.

‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:12:06 +0200

The Guardian: ‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?

Luiz Felipe Scolari: ‘Everything I did as a manager, I learned as a teacher'

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 09:20:58 +0200

The Guardian: Luiz Felipe Scolari: ‘Everything I did as a manager, I learned as a teacher’.

In Brazil he is renowned as a safety-first tactician, knockout tournament specialist and a master of man management. “I knew to which point I could influence people to grow, to play better, to be better people in their lives,” he says, “All of these things that I saw as a manager, I learned in school as a teacher.”

ERP for engineers

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 11:52:15 +0200

ERP for engineers gives a fascinating overview and history of ERP (enterprise resource planning) and the company that pioneered the industry, SAP. Like the development and adoption of GDS, ERP plays a significant part in the history of computerisation and the field of software engineering.

Better numeric input fields

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 18:53:06 +0200

Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers. The number input type in HTML (<input type="number=">) has always been problematic.

Magenta isn't a real color

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 10:53:04 +0200

Magenta isn’t a real color and what this says about how our brains work and how we perceive color.

NHS Digital on how to write good questions and use inclusive language

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 09:52:29 +0200

NHS Digital has some great resources, such as how to write good questions for forms and a guide on inclusive language.

The least common divisor and the greatest common multiple

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 10:36:18 +0200

Mark Dominus: The least common divisor and the greatest common multiple.

Why you should not stop at your first idea

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 10:30:30 +0200

How you can better at picking creative ideas. A realistic first idea might not be as creative as an abstract second one, new research shows.

What's wrong with DateTime anyway?

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 17:33:27 +0200

What’s wrong with DateTime anyway? A meticulous dive into why dates and times are tricky, by the author of NodaTime.

You (probably) don’t need Kubernetes

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:58:01 +0200

You (probably) don’t need Kubernetes.

You know those old “Hello world according to programmer skill” jokes that start with printf(“hello, world\n”) for a junior programmer and end with some convoluted Java OOP design pattern solution for senior software architect engineer? This is kind of like that.

If software engineering is the bottleneck…

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 11:42:24 +0200

Will you survive the Tech Drought? Lucas McGregor suggests the lack of access to software engineers now limits businesses more than the lack of funds, and organisations are wasting this precious resource through mismanagement, “anti-work” (supporting legacy code and tech debt), and confusing agility with strategy.

How Boeing's managerial revolution created the 737 MAX disaster

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 16:19:34 +0200

New Republic: How Boeing’s managerial revolution created the 737 MAX disaster.

Definition: pareidolia

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 11:17:26 +0200

pareidolia — noun the tendency to interpret vague stimuli as something familiar.

A bitter end for regular joe? scientists engineer a smooth, beanless coffee

noemail@noemail.org (Ilya) — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 16:17:16 +0200

NPR: A bitter end for regular joe? scientists engineer a smooth, beanless coffee.