{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"DEV Community: Aileen Rae","description":"The latest articles on DEV Community by Aileen Rae (@aileenr).","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr","image":{"url":"https:\/\/media2.dev.to\/dynamic\/image\/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto\/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F419187%2F1c9625b9-5209-471a-80c8-3d399b8b189f.jpeg","title":"DEV Community: Aileen Rae","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr"},"language":"en","item":[{"title":"Bookmarks: February 2023","pubDate":"Sun, 12 Mar 2023 17:16:26 +0000","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr\/bookmarks-february-2023-1027","guid":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr\/bookmarks-february-2023-1027","description":"

Who cares if it's March when I'm publishing this! Here are some web articles that stuck with me last month.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Tech and Web\n<\/h2>\n\n

\n \n \n Building your colour palette - Refactoring UI<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

Building attractive interfaces is a large component of my love for building on the web, but I am not a designer. I have a decent enough eye for seeing what's wrong<\/em> in a web layout and for accurately implementing a design spec. But I trip up when it comes to creating, and one of the biggest hurdles for me is colour<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

I've tried so many colour palette generators and generated some beautiful colour schemes, but I can never get them to actually work<\/em>. This article on Refactoring UI illustrates exactly why - it's impossible. A web interface colour palette is much more intricate, and much more full of grey than you would expect.<\/p>\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Using image examples, it shows you how each colour in your palette needs to have different shades, and how these would be implemented in common UI components. I will be referencing this often for future side projects.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Exluding non-binary people by design: How sign-up forms can lead to discrimination - Sarah L. Fossheim<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

An excellent exploration of how designing digital systems has to have inclusiveness baked in from the start.<\/p>\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\n

This is why data isn\u2019t neutral or objective, but influenced by those who collect it, and later possibly further compromised by the biases of those that use it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I also highly recommend the follow-up article: Getting started with trans inclusive design<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Why I'm not the biggest fan of Single Page Applications - Manuel Matuzovic<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

In a world where SPA vs MPA has become somewhat of a flame-war, this measured take is a refreshing read.<\/p>\n\n

As someone who started her web development career working with SPA frameworks, I'm ashamed even this surface-level article highlighted holes in my accessibility logic. This very website does not consistently shift focus to the beginning of the DOM on SPA-navigation.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Bing: \u201cI will not harm you unless you harm me first\u201d - Simon Willison<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

A wild ride of a read \ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Career\n<\/h2>\n\n

\n \n \n The engineer-manager pendulum - Charity.wtf<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

There's this pervasive idea in software engineering that once you reach a certain level of seniority you have to choose: do you want to continue to be an individual contributor (IC) or a manager? Just google \"IC vs engineering manager\" and be overwhelmed by the sheer number of discussion pieces.<\/p>\n\n

I think a lot of people resist this dichotomy. In my current company, we have a tech lead role which is meant to be a split of engineering manager and IC engineer duties. Our job ad says 25% of a tech lead's time is spent writing code. In reality though, the management responsibilities are always higher priority than any IC work.<\/p>\n\n

The engineer-manager pendulum article has an explanation for this:<\/p>\n\n

\n

Management is highly interruptive, and great engineering \u2014 where you\u2019re learning things \u2014 requires blocking out interruptions. You can\u2019t do these two opposite things at once.\u00a0As a manager,\u00a0it is your job to be available for your team, to be interrupted. It is your job to choose<\/em> to hand off\u00a0the challenging assignments, so that your engineers can get better at engineering.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The alternative? Focus on either IC or management one at a time, but go back and forth between the two: the pendulum. Charity articulates why this works far better than I can so go read it!<\/p>\n\n","category":["design","webdev","personal"]},{"title":"Bookmarks: January 2023","pubDate":"Sat, 04 Feb 2023 15:33:56 +0000","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr\/bookmarks-january-2023-3j4h","guid":"https:\/\/dev.to\/aileenr\/bookmarks-january-2023-3j4h","description":"

Please enjoy some curated links to online content I have enjoyed this past month. \ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Tech and Web\n<\/h2>\n\n

\n \n \n A Debugging Manifesto - Julia Evans<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

\"An<\/a>
\nA friendly approach to reframing software bugfixing as a learning activity.<\/p>\n\n

\n

If something is breaking, it\u2019s often because there\u2019s something wrong in my mental model<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

\n \n \n A CSS challenge: skewed highlight - Vadim Makeev<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

\"A<\/a>
\nA really nice highlighter effect with modern CSS. It achieves the slant using gradients, rather than separate elements or pseudo-elements. It also leverages a little-known CSS property for getting the effect to work across line breaks.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n \n Clever Code Considered Harmful - Josh W. Comeau<\/a>\n<\/h3>\n\n

\"A<\/a>
\nA well-articulated case against complex and overly \"clever\" code. The most compelling takeaways for me are:<\/p>\n\n