Notices by Heather Buchel (hbuchel@hachyderm.io), page 3

I've said this before, I think after first joining Mastodon, but you all give me those early web vibes on here that I missed so dearly. Just people tinkering with the things they like, figuring things out and what they can make happen with ActivityPub, the web, game dev etc. It's really good! It's what a lot of us were already doing but it felt so drowned out on Twitter.

Do you all also do that thing where when you get new followers you check out your own profile to see how deranged you sound lately

The longer you work in software the more it pleases you to delete code.

I guess I thought when I told my landlord that if I touch the pipe under our sink hard enough it gives way (like I could put my finger through it) and that's the cause of the leak that they would do more to the pipe than just put tape on it but really, what do I know.

how much of this house is made of tape I wonder

I'm a little overwhelmed at the responses to that last article, thanks all.

Sometimes I think my writing skews too rant-y. But, I took some time to consider why that is. I (and I think a lot of others judging from the responses) have spent probably the last 10 years or so feeling a little gaslighted by our industry. Especially if your works leans further on the UI side, you've probably been feeling that way for a while. I have. So that's what I want to write about at this point in time.

Here is my (slightly less unhinged than I expected) musings on the current state of designing for the web.

Generally, I think we lost something when we stopped calling people web designers and forced people to pick a side.

https://heather-buchel.com/blog/2023/10/why-your-web-design-sucks/

@thomasfuchs More and more every day!

I have a deep appreciation for any women that stuck around in this industry that are older than me and I really hope to be someone else's favorite cool old lady web developer.

I might fuck right off to the seaside and start raising sheep and chickens though at any moment!

@thomasfuchs I am constantly fighting the link underline battle and I am tired. Like, friend, not even a color change? Can I get anything? Please?

You know, a lot of us took a lot of flack for being sad about how "modern" websites have a really crappy "view source" experience, because that's how a lot of us learned to make websites back in the ole days. Or being sad that websites don't have cute customization options anymore (Myspace, etc).

But I'm pretty convinced that newer devs are not really learning HTML. They're not really getting that "this is an effective simple way to make something show up in your browser" learning experience.

Shout out to all the developers that continue making client side paywalls to appease their company's paywall requirements that are pretty easily skippable with some display: none and unchecking a few overflow:hidden in the chrome console. Love you, cherish you.

I wrote down some thoughts about the current trend of calling AI-generated UIs "innovative" and exaggerating their ability to create production ready code.

The TLDR is we've been here before and it doesn't feel new.

https://heather-buchel.com/blog/2023/09/ai-generated-ui-is-not-innovative/

You ever meet someone and you just know they are really into AI stuff solving all of our problems? Please never let someone think that sort of thing (about any tech really) about me.

@chargrille @Tim_Eagon Yeah, I expect their instance (where everyone is at currently) is not going to be the same space after federation. Like, anyone that cares about this stuff (you know, not having to read words from white supremacists and having racial slurs hurled at you) will be forced to vacate to elsewhere.

Men would rather invent a whole JS framework than learn CSS.

@chargrille A whole lot of anti-Blackness and frustration with their inability to moderate the instance while seeming to continuously not take anything moderation/trust/safety seriously because "federation will solve it" https://hachyderm.io/@hbuchel/110705304155823684

BlueSky seems to be melting right now (I mean, it has kind of been on this trajectory) and I just really wish people would give Mastodon another chance.

Not gonna lie, I was really hoping BlueSky would be ok. I missed a lot of people from Twitter. But it was almost immediately clear it was not. Starting with the benefiting from Black people doing the work to bring communities on board with pretty much no acknowledgement of that work from leadership, to having a wildly inaccessible web app, it's just really not a surprise what's happening right now.