Jeffrey Zeldman

No, I haven’t, thanks for mentioning it. Would Goodhart’s Law actually apply here though, since right now the data (as far as I can tell) isn’t being measured at all?

To your counter-example, maybe the metrics I described aren’t good enough and should integrate some disease severity criteria or site-weighting or comorbidity score (although as one continues to subdivide the population this way eventually you end up with n=1 and the results are useless again) but like, surely we should be trying to measure something other than the good feels and word-of-mouth of people who have to work with each other?

It physically hurts my brain when I think about how we measure the dumbest shit in software engineering, like which shade of blue to use to improve clickthroughs[0], but when it comes to even attempting quantification of activities which are literally life or death, sorry, too hard, can’t do it. Surgeons will refuse to do hard procedures, insurers will destroy careers, EMRs are full of bad data (so what is the point of the bloody records if they have become that useless‽), surveying patients would cost too much…

I will ultimately defer to the experience of people in the field—I am not a physician or statistician—but sometimes I feel like I’m just being fed arguments repurposed from the bad cops playbook. Oh, we can’t ever possibly start quantifying individual officers’ use of force, because some parts of the city have more crime, and if we do that then those officers will…

The concern of what advancements in technology mean for web workers has recently blossomed in main circles.

Jeff Croft wrote that being a web designer isn't enough to sustain a career.[1] Jeffrey Zeldman countered that argument with the notion that being an expert in the field is enough to sustain oneself, but only if you can expand on your knowledge with other skills.[2] Andrew Clarke then followed-up on both of those pieces.[3]

It's an interesting time to be involved in tech, especially on the web. What comes next is simply more adaptation, what other choice to we (as workers) have?

1. http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2014/jan/03/web-standards-killed-the-html-star/
2. http://www.zeldman.com/2014/01/06/its-2014-is-web-design-dead/
3. http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/its-2014.-web-design-isnt-dead

This discussion was, in fact, making the rounds of the standardistas a week or two ago (following the release of html5test). Not only did everybody agree with your assessment, but most of them thought it was good (only a few people such as Tantek are trying to make HTML5 refer only to the W3C HTML5 spec... they'll fail).

As Chris Wilson insightfully put it:

> HTML5 is now a brand, more than it is a specification. There are a variety of reasons for that, and a variety of persons “responsible” for that confusion, but the ship has sailed.

See also:

http://www.zeldman.com/2010/08/01/html5-test/

http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2010/aug/02/term-html5/

http://blog.codinginparadise.org/2010/06/why-im-going-to-keep-calling-it-html5.html

http://www.zeldman.com/2010/08/03/html5-fuzzies/

Thankfully, I didn't have that issue. I use the NoScript Firefox extension mainly because I have an ancient computer and not downloading and running JavaScript provides a huge gain in conserving resources. I thought it might lead to a less pleasant web experience but so for it hasn't and it saves me from annoyances such as pop-ups and interstitials.

Back on topic, I used to be really bad for running late. Most of the time people are too polite and let it go but as I grew older and became more self aware, I came to realise that it is rude and disrespectful - even though you don't intend it to be. A while back, I read Jeffrey Zeldman's Free Advice: Show up early [1] and it really struck a chord.

[1] http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/05/free-advice-show-up-early/

When I learnt front-end dev there were no seniors to learn from — I was part of the first generation, and we pretty much just made it up as we went. We learnt by trial and error, and by looking at each others source code.

And blogs. Read web dev blogs. Much more up to date than books, and you get to see the latest ideas and take part in discussions of evolving standards. My favs: A List Apart, Adactio, Smashing Magazine, CSS-Tricks, Zeldman, Stuff & Nonsense, The Web Ahead, Mozilla Hacks, Coding Horror.

https://alistapart.com

https://adactio.com

https://www.smashingmagazine.com

https://css-tricks.com

http://www.zeldman.com

https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk

http://5by5.tv/webahead

https://hacks.mozilla.org

https://blog.codinghorror.com

He's moved on from 2009's year of negativity when the divorce seemed anything but a beautiful dance of protons:

http://twitter.com/zeldman/status/1558664990 & http://twitter.com/zeldman/status/12644932699

And it was only six months ago when he said it's necessary to have been abandoned, betrayed and ridiculed and to have a "restless, broken heart" in order to succeed: http://www.zeldman.com/2009/10/22/dirty-little-secret-of-success/

Just his own output seems to demonstrate that maybe it does take some pain to feel truly grateful for what you do have, but, sadly, I doubt most people will appreciate that until, well, they've been through the mill too.