Standards are useful, but after a while they represent the beliefs of the past, not the needs of the future.

A good quote from Mathias Verraes on standards.

If you're going to read one thing today, make it this. So much good stuff in here I could quote just any paragraph.

complexity is spirit demon that enter codebase through well-meaning but ultimately very clubbable non grug-brain developers and project managers who not fear complexity spirit demon or even know about sometime […]

grug no able see complexity demon, but grug sense presence in code base

Rich Harris & the rest of the Svelte team have previously mentioned that they use TypeScript with JSDoc instead of .ts files. That gives TypeScript's safety benefits during development and on CI, without an additional build step.

There are a few nuances to this, Pascal Schilp did a great job reviewing the background and benefits behind this decision.

When you define too much work up front, you add unnecessary management overhead. More importantly, you create a bias and stifle a team's creativity to solve the problem.

No one defines all the work up front. That's a fools errand. Assuming you know too much up front is the best way to find out you're wrong in the end. Instead we define the direction, the purpose, the reason, and a few specific "must haves" up front. The rest — all the rest, which is mostly everything — is determined during the project, by the people on the project.

When you want to compare two database columns in Laravel, you can't use where because it treats the argument you're comparing to as a value.

Instead, Laravel has a whereColumn method you can use to compare a value to another column's value.

// Retrieve posts that were updated after
// they were published.
 
Post::query()
    ->whereColumn('updated_at', '>', 'published_at')
    ->get();

Timeless advice from Freek & Brent.

Just like reading text, grouping code in paragraphs can be helpful to improve its readability. We like to say we add some "breathing space" to our code.

$page = $this->pages()->where('slug', $url)->first();
if (! $page) {
    throw new Exception();
}

$page = $this->pages()->where('slug', $url)->first();
 
if (! $page) {
    throw new Exception();
}

Just one line of space can make the difference.

As I'm refactoring an existing design system, this article by Elise Hein came quit timely.

We consider HTML to be cheap, but wrapping divs in divs in divs comes with a cost that slowly creeps up.

Why avoid extra wrapper elements?

1. Bloated html hurts performance
2. Redundant elements can create problems with accessibility
3. Redundant elements can break styling
4. Deeply nested dom trees are annoying to work with

When using whereHas in Laravel, it's not uncommon to also eager load the relation using with.

$posts = Post::query()
    ->with('author')
    ->whereHas('author', function (Builder $query) {
        $query->where('name', 'Seb');
    })
    ->get();

Laravel also has a more succinct method that combines the two: withWhereHas.

$posts = Post::query()
    ->withWhereHas('author', function (Builder $query) {
        $query->where('name', 'Seb');
    })
    ->get();

Since this blog is a static site, I don't have a server running to do something dynamic when I publish a new post. I was about to set up Zapier or IFTTT to auto-toot blog posts to Mastodon, until I realized I finally had a use case to give val.town a shot.

With val town you can write lambda-ish functions in a GitHub gist-ish interface. Single functions are called "vals". The fun part is you can reference your own and other people's vals, which creates a network of atomic actions you can stack like Lego blocks. Vals can be scheduled so you can use them as background services.

First I created a generic postToMastodon val to toot a status on Mastodon. Then I created a tootLatestPosts val that combines it with an existing @stevekrouse.newRssItems val, which fetches RSS items from a feed.

Finally, I scheduled tootLatestPosts to run every hour. Now posts from this blog automatically appear on my Mastodon profile!

I was building wireframes for a website with HTML & CSS. Since it's a prototype, not all actions are functional. When a visitor reviewing the prototype tries to click something that isn't hooked up, I wanted to clarify what they could interact with. This also allows visitors to click anywhere on the page to highlight what they can click.

In the past, I've used JavaScript to add an outline to clickable elements when something non-interactive was clicked. But with the :has and :is selectors, this is doable with plain CSS.

html:active:not(:has(a:active, button:active, label:active)) :is(a, button, label) {
  outline: 2px solid blue;
}

How it works:

• html:active will match whenever you hold down your mouse on the page
• :not(:has(a:active, button:active, label:active)) will not match when you're holding down your mouse on an a, button, or label element, to avoid the outline from appearing when the user clicks something that is functional
• :is(a, button, label) matches all a, button, and label elements on the page

View a demo on CodePen.

I started using a hyper key on macOS. A hyper key is a single key mapped to Shift + Ctrl + Opt + Cmd. Since this isn't exactly practical to pull off with your fingers, apps don't use this combination for built-in shortcuts. This means you have a layer for custom shortcuts without worrying about clashes.

My hyper key is mapped to Caps Lock. I actually already use caps lock as an escape key. Less travel than reaching for Esc with your pinky! Thanks to Karabiner Elements and Brett Terpstra's guide I was able to remap it as Esc and a hyper key.

When I give Caps Lock a short tap, it functions as Esc. If I hold it and press another key, it functions as a hyper key, Shift + Ctrl + Opt + Cmd.

I still have a lot of room to map to, but for now I'm using my hyper key for a few global application shortcuts like Quick Entry in Things. In the future, I'm planning to map more Raycast commands too.

As I roam deeper into Svelte territory, I came across this talk from 2019 by Rich Harris, creator of Svelte.

Rich explains how he arrived at Svelte's reactivity from first principles, swimming against the virtual-DOM stream other frameworks follow.

Despite being from 2019, it's still relevant. Even if you're not into Svelte, it's worth watching as a great standalone talk.

Timeless advice from Derrick Reimer:

Not all projects are inherently small, but you can always break them down into smaller chunks. […]

Each incremental task brought us one step closer to a functioning v1. By shipping these tiny branches to production as we go, we became increasingly confident in the “bones” of the feature. As soon as a slice of the project was ready to test, the whole team hammered on it in production – an effective way to tease out bugs and rough spots in the user experience.

Set Studio—founded by Andy Bell—has a new website.

Aside from the good looks, it's refreshing to see a page of that size to load and feel so fast.

For the past few months, I've been experimenting with Svelte & SvelteKit. Svelte peaked my interest because it's a tool molded by the web. A lot of Svelte APIs piggyback on existing web affordances like plain HTML and CSS variables.

Shorthex is a small app to transform 6-digit hex color codes to 3-digit codes. Here's a quick overview of the features of Svelte I enjoyed using.

Read more