It’s such an innocuous question, and I have a hunch that a lot of people settle on their answer during childhood, and never really give it another thought.

My favorite color wasn’t always green. I think I would have said ​“blue” for a while in middle school. In kindergarten, my yearbook had a fill-in-the-blank survey inside the cover where I wrote that my favorite color was black. (That rings true for my current wardrobe.) I also remember a phase in elementary school where I would respond that my favorite color was ​“clear” — not in a pensive ​“let the world’s colors shine through” way, but in a ​“let’s argue whether ​‘clear’ is a color” way.

At the beginning of my 30s, I saw a hoodie in a store and realized that I actually really like a warm yellow. I didn’t know that about myself.

Some people seem to have an easy time rattling off their favorite movie, or the favorite vacation they’ve been on, or their favorite pizza place. I’ve had a hard time with that, but I’ve never really been sure why.

I think a lot of the friction comes down to wishing for a better question — something that begs for a longer answer than ​“green.” Something that inspires follow-up, or demands explanation. Otherwise, I just tend to get lost in the parameters and logistics.

For example:

You’re going to live on a desert island for the rest of your life, and you can only bring one album — what is it?

…so how will I hear the music? CDs and vinyl aren’t super conducive to a sandy environment. If it’s something else, you’re telling me it can’t store more than one album on it? Are my basic needs met on this island, and the music is for enjoyment, or is the music my only salvation during my demise? If my needs are met, like…how? I assume I’m alone on this island, otherwise why couldn’t we all just listen to each other’s albums?

If the answer doesn’t spur discussion, maybe I’d rather just talk about the question.

I’m realizing the rest of the friction comes down to a lack of reflection when things are really, really good.

That question popped into my head, with my birthday approaching, and I realized I don’t have a good answer. I’m going to find one — I’ll look through my photos, let the memories wash over me, and I’m almost certain one year will stand out above the rest — but I don’t have one now, and I don’t like that.

I’d like to be more intentional about savoring the good times. Not just being ​“in the moment,” but sitting with it afterward. How did it make me feel? Who was there? Were we celebrating something? What time of year was it?

If I get better at keeping track, maybe I’ll have an easier time picking a favorite.

What if, instead of sharing a Github Pull Request URL in Slack, your Slack team channel could instead be subscribed to the Github repository. Maybe new Pull Requests are broadcasted to followers, and replies from Slack users to those posts are sent as comments to the Pull Request in addition to being threaded in Slack.

A really compelling idea from Mehul Kar. Tons of work productivity tools are built from the start with integrations in mind, but those integrations aren’t bi-directional. And every tool needs to rebuild the whole ecosystem.

I can make up something from whole cloth and tell you that I saw it with my own eyes, or heard it from a friend, or read it in a paper, and there is absolutely no way to tell, from the text itself, that it is fake.

Kind of strange how good it felt to read this essay from Frank Lantz despite the point being ​“we’re already living this AI doomsday scenario you’re afraid of.”

You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Especially enjoyed number 6 as well:

“There” is no better than ​“here”. When your ​“there” has become a ​“here”, you will simply obtain a ​“there” that will look better to you than your present ​“here”.

He fixed things often and silently. Grandpa just cared about things working. He had an instinct for not just broken things but soon to be broken things.

A lovely tribute from Dr. Cat Hicks to her grandpa. I really resonate with the characterization of ​“craft” as both action, through care and empathy, and as observation, through noticing the constraints/​tradeoffs, and weathering and anticipating their effects.

This guide is an interactive deep dive into the d attribute, otherwise known as the path data. It’s the post I wish I had when I first learned about SVG paths! Along the way, we’ll learn about the different types of path commands and how to use them to draw various icons.

Fantastic interactive article from Nanda Syahrasyad. I love this kind of stuff.

Ever wondered how a QR code works? No, me neither but it’s low-key fascinating.

Very cool breakdown from Dan Hollick. I had no idea about the error correction bits baked into the format itself.

But I think that these conversations stop short of an important conclusion (it’s Twitter, of course, not Plato’s Academy): design is a radically different exercise than it was in the 18^th, 13^th, or 5^th century. Industrialization has made the world more deeply interconnected, automated, and chaotic. The aesthetics of the things around us are not in the way they look to us, but in the way they came to be, and the way they shape the future.

Really interesting take from Matthew Ström on what beauty and necessity is behind the surface-level aesthetic differences between modern and classic industrial design.

And one reason to believe programmers won’t always be this way is that there’s plenty of evidence that the next generation of professional programmers is no longer dominated by enthusiasts. People becoming software developers today look markedly different than those who came before.

I enjoyed this essay from Justin Searls about the potential generational shift going on in tech, and especially enjoyed the examples in the final section of how we might use this framing to better understand one another and anticipate conflict.

I believe we aren’t nostalgic for the technology, or the aesthetic, or even the open web ethos. What we’re nostalgic for is a time when outsiders were given a chance to do something fun, off to the side and left alone, because mainstream culture had no idea what the hell to do with this thing that was right in front of it.

A neat look at nostalgia from Jay Hoffmann. I definitely feel that ​“fondness” pop up every so often for things like the early days of Twitter, or how carefree things felt in college, or how incredible I felt first learning web development.

You see, the dividing line between me (a person) and my work (something I am paid to do) is tenuous at best. I’m more than just an employee, naturally. I’m also a friend, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and someone in desperate need of some hobbies. But the hard truth is that if I’m working, I’m never not fully consumed by my job. At my worst, I like it this way. I am good at work, where I can be capable and in control, and not so good at life, where things are messy and unpredictable.

I really resonated with this sentiment from Kelly Watkins, and have slowly come to understand that I’ll often pour myself into work as a safe harbor where I have some amount of agency in the face of things outside of work that are outside my control.

I’ll admit, for most of my early career I thought everyone obsessed over the latest and greatest HTML, CSS and JavaScript happenings, I thought it just came with the job. But it turns out, there’s just a pretty good bubble for that sort of thing

Loved this characterization from Andrew Walpole of something I’ve felt at worst ashamed of and at best uneasy about.

I enjoy working with components as much as the next guy, but practically every mature server framework has support for a component-based workflow today. And you know what? They’ll also handle however much mundane busywork you want to throw at them: things like input validation, SQL sanitization, database access, e‑mails, authorization, timezones and dates, asset bundling, job running, the list just goes on and on and on.

I’ll be honest, it was a little cathartic reading this take from Johan Halse. That’s not to pass judgement on the quality or merits of modern front-end tooling, but just that it seems very obvious we’re using the same word to define things that are drastically different and can’t really be directly compared.

But generally, I’ve found ​“the source of truth” often hinders more than it helps. And I think the phrase needs to be rethought, if not discarded altogether.

Really enjoyed this take from Ethan Marcotte. It especially resonated with me when thinking about things like ​“business logic,” and ​“requirements” which often have substantial effort put toward capture and definition, but are necessarily hard-to-impossible to canonicalize.

Today I want to talk to you about why I am the way that I am. And by that I mean, why I care so much about experience design; about the experiences people have with things. Why I get frustrated by things that don’t work, or don’t work well, or aren’t easy to use. Why mediocrity infuriates me so much.

What a beautifully blunt characterization from Aral Balkan of this one, short life we all have, and the ensuing responsibility we have as people who make things.

That’s why my 2023 yearly theme is ​“Connection.”

I want to shift my focus toward feeling more connected with the world directly around me: rekindle interpersonal connections that have lapsed, create new ties to places close to my heart, re-balance my relationship with social media, and resurface writing as a way to better connect with my own mind and emotions.

Ideal outcomes

Be a more communicative with family and friends

I’d like to be more proactive about communication and I hope that communicating more with those around me will help strengthen and broaden my personal support system.

Volunteer in my local community at least twice

I hope that volunteering will provide a sense of personal satisfaction or accomplishment, and generate new connections to people in my local community.

Take photo walks

My photography hobby has stagnated, but I think photo walks could be a great way to reconnect with something I once loved and to find new things to love about my neighborhood.

Blog at least four times

Writing has always helped me gather my thoughts professionally, but has not been a tool I’ve reached for personally. I’d like to try to use it more to examine my own feelings, and I hope that sharing those thoughts publicly might foster a connection to the open web I love dearly.