Take a look at what the Arc browser is doing with Boosts as an example of what DevTools could be; experimental, fun, and downright cool. In Arc’s vision of the web, websites aren’t this thing you build in between meetings with your manager, but are instead toys that you can mold and reshape in the palm of your hand. Arc brings back the spirit of... See more
An Integrated Development Environment, or IDE, is an app used by programmers to develop software. [...] IDEs provide a kind of augmented cognition for programmers. They reduce the cognitive capacity needed for software development by automating some of the work. This is freeing: it allows programmers to think less about coding, and more about... See more
It’s tempting to think ‘So what?’ and dismiss these details as incidental or specific to stair carpentry. And they are specific to stair carpentry; that’s what makes them details. But the existence of a surprising number of meaningful details is not specific to stairs. Surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal... See more
But contemporary technologists cannot rely only on definitions made by those who are not engaged in the practice of technological creation. Instead, we must define technology for ourselves.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
To be fair, computers — both the desktop kind and various mobile kinds — enable seemingly-impossible things. But it feels frustrating to see the pioneering spirit that originally led to the development of modern computers giving way to uninspired flat interfaces and CRUD SaaS apps. The things you can do are limited to bespokely-implemented... See more
Take reading seriously, develop a passion for it, and view it as part of your practice as a knowledge worker to get ahead, but along the way, having fun doing so.