Week Notes 006

The Week

As an update from last week, I'm feeling a bit better about things are going with my role as the tech lead on my current team. I got involved in a conversation about the value of test-driving an aspect of the project that hasn't been tested very much at all, which went really well. There's been some pushback on testing that bit, but I pretty clearly laid out the benefits of test-driving while, as far as I can tell, keeping my cool, which is something I definitely feel is a quality of a good tech lead. I've also gotten some pretty positive feedback from the client and my account lead that what I've been doing is working, which definitely made me feel a lot better. I really thrive on feedback and an outside perspective, so it was really valuable to hear from them. Overall, definitely in a much better place on this than last week.

For the project, we had a great demo here at the end of the sprint, and an even better retro. Retros are my favorite sprint cadence meeting. I really like getting together with the team and taking a good look at the last couple of weeks. As long as we're honest with our feedback for ourselves as a team and can feel comfortable bringing up things that aren't working, retros have such a tremendous effect on the health of the team.

And I didn't get much done on my audio visualiser this week. I've been doing a lot of work on my house and getting ready for my son turning six in a couple weeks, so not really much downtime on the weekends to work on it. Hopefully, things will chill out in April, and I'll have a little more time to work on it.

The Links

• I Used Tailwind for the U in CUBE CSS And I Liked It

  A surprising article from Andy Bell, often seen poking fun at tailwind advocates on Twitter. As a bonus, CUBE CSS is a great system I've been wanting to try out.

• Interop 2022

  This is something I didn't really know much about, but looks like a great project. It's a big driver behind things like Flexbox and Grid getting such widespread support, and those things are great, so it's definitely worth a look.

• In Defense of Sass

  Another article from the wonderful Stephanie Eckles. I enjoyed reading through this, even as someone who isn't absolutely in love with SASS. I've used it quite a bit, just not a passionate defender of it.

• WebGPU

  Surma talks about a new Web API for working with GPUs at a low level.

• A11y Automation Track

  A11y testing information site with lists of accessibility violations and testing tools.

Send-off

And that's it, folks. Thanks for reading, and I'll be back next week. Have a great weekend!