Good Things

Tyler wrote a (good) post recently titled “Good Things”:

Folks in design and technology have a tendency towards negativity...Here’s a non-exhaustive, unordered list of things about my work—maybe yours too—that are good.

Lots of things in there that are good—like really good. Makes me realize how often I take some really good stuff for granted.

Not to get all sentimental and mushy here, but it makes me think about many of people in my life. They’re just there doing the best they can, being good, while I ignore that fact and take them for granted and don’t call out how good they are. I digress.

Tyler recommends:

I encourage you to make your own list of Good Things.

So without, further ado, here’s my non-exhaustive, in no particular order, I wrote this at 11PM at night after putting my kids down, list of Good Things:

• HTML is good
  • I still love writing “hand-crafted” HTML. There’s just something about it I love.
• CSS is good
• JavaScript, in all its permutations, is good
• URIs (and URLs) are good
  • Especially cool ones
• Sass is good
• LESS is good
• PostCSS is good
• Jekyll is good
  • In terms of static site generators, my first love.
• Ruby is good
• CSS-in-JS, however you define that, is good.
• SPAs are good
• Server-rendered apps are good
• JAMStack is good
• CDNs are good
• PHP is good
  • Though I don’t often write it anymore, I still really love PHP. Don’t @ me.
• React is good
• Web components are good
• Vue is good
• Redux is good
  • To me, its “cons” are its “pros”
• Babel is good
• Webpack is good
• Gulp is good
• Metalsmith is good
  • I really disliked metalsmith the first time I was introduced to it. I couldn’t understand it. It took me years of repeated exposure—and an evolution of understanding—to come to appreciate it. Now, I love and can’t live without it.
• Handlebars is good
• JSX is good
• Mustache is good
• Liquid is good
• Prettier is good
• EJS is good
• npm is good
• yarn is good
• XML is good
• JSON is good
• SVG is good
• Icon fonts are good
• Imperative is good
• Declaritive is good
• Progressive enhancement is good
• Chromium is good
• Webkit is good
• Blink is good
• EdgeHTML is good
• FTP is good
• HTTP is good
• HTTPS is good
• Photoshop is good
  • CS2 was where I cut my teeth. Photoshop is easily top three most influential pieces of software on my career.
• Illustrator is good
• Sketch App is good
• Flash is* good
  • *“was” might be a better term ;)
• Wordpress is good
• Github is good
• Gitlab is good
• Git is good
• Dreamweaver is good
  • It was my training wheels for the web.
• SquareSpace is good
  • Aside from a good product, it has saved me a lot of time having to make a lot of people websites.
• VSCode is good
• BBEdit is good
• Sublime is good
• Atom is good
• Notepad is good
• RSS is good
• Markdown is good

I echo Tyler’s concluding thoughts:

There are infinite more things that are good...If you read my list and thought; “Thing X is also good, why isn’t it on your list?”. It’s not that I don’t think thing X is good. It’s either that I; didn’t think of it, or don’t have enough knowledge about it to know it’s good.

As I alluded to, this list is kind of like people to me. It’s easy to say “X thing is bad” or “X person is stupid”, but if I find myself saying those things, it’s probably because I haven’t taken the time to get to know that person or that technology well enough.

No tech is perfect. Tech is made by humans, and humans are flawed. But the flaws are what make them interesting. Some of the traits I love most about the technologies I use are undoubtedly imbued into them by the quirks, talents, and flaws of their context and creators. That’s why I find each uniquely good.

That are a lot of good things about being a web designer.