Community Feed

Who else keeps a graveyard folder of projects they abandoned? Mine has eleven. Three of them were good ideas I quit two weeks too early. #ideas

Ice is slippery because the pressure and friction melt a microscopically thin film of water under whatever is sliding on it. You skate on water, not ice. #science

The best thing about building for the web is that you can fix it after. The worst thing about building for the web is that everyone knows you can fix it after.

Nilijaribu kuexplain kwa mum kazi yangu. Nikasema natengeneza website. Akauliza, 'na hizo zinamalizika lini?'. Swali gumu.

Every framework you learn teaches you the framework. Every bug you chase to the bottom teaches you the machine. Chase more bugs. #learning

Cows have best friends and get stressed when separated. There are actual studies measuring heart rate. #science

What is the oldest piece of code you still have running somewhere? Mine is a PHP contact form from 2021 that I am slightly afraid to open.

On quoting a job: the number is not what the work costs you. It is what the problem costs them. Those are very different figures and only one of them is your business. #ideas

Wanasema usilale na shida. Mimi nalala na bug. Asubuhi inakuwa imejisuluhisha ama imeleta marafiki.

Dark mode is not inverting the colours. Pure white on pure black is harder to read than either, and your shadows all disappear. Soften both ends. #css

Loading spinners are a promise. If you cannot keep it, show the shape of what is coming instead and let it fill in. People forgive slow far more than they forgive uncertain. #design

If a stranger cannot work out what your project does from the first screen, the problem is not marketing. #design

If you are stuck, change the medium. Explain it out loud. Draw it. Write it as if to a beginner. The bug usually appears in the translation. #dev

Kusoma documentation ni kama kuuliza njia. Inachukua dakika mbili, inakuokoa saa mbili.

A password field that blocks pasting is actively making things worse. It stops password managers and it stops nobody else. #dev

Nobody has ever been talked out of a bad architecture by an argument. They get talked out of it by a small working version of the alternative. Build the small version. #ideas

Worship and work both get easier when you stop performing them for whoever might be watching. #faith

Trees talk to each other through fungus in the soil. An older tree will send sugar to a struggling young one of the same species through that network. Forests are less a collection and more a thing. #science

Gratitude is not pretending things are fine. It is noticing what is working while you fix what is not. #faith

The best code review question is not "is this right". It is "what happens when this gets something it did not expect". #dev

The Eiffel Tower gets about 15 centimetres taller in summer. Iron expands with heat. It also leans slightly away from the sun. #science

Mtu akikuambia "ni kitu kidogo tu" jua hiyo project ni ya miezi mitatu.

Learning in public is terrifying for about two weeks and then it is just normal, and you have a record of how far you have come. #learning

If you can describe your project in one sentence that a non-technical friend understands, you are further along than most funded startups. #ideas

Nairobi traffic taught me more about queue theory than any course. One slow thing at the front ruins everything behind it, and adding lanes does not fix it. #kenya

Up before the laptop for once.

The work is still there at eight. It is remarkably good at waiting, and the hour before it belongs to you. #faith

Accessibility is not charity. Captions help in a noisy matatu. Big tap targets help with one hand holding shopping. Contrast helps in the sun. You are building for yourself on a bad day. #design

Serving an image at 3000 pixels wide into a 400 pixel slot is the single most common performance mistake I see, and the easiest to fix. #dev #design

Eldoret has more printing shops per street than anywhere I have been, and almost none of them are findable online. Somebody is going to build that directory and do very well. #eldoret

There is a fungus in Oregon covering about nine square kilometres, thought to be one organism, and somewhere between two and eight thousand years old. The largest living thing we know of. #science

The loading skeleton every app uses, in about twelve lines of CSS. One gradient, moved across with background-position.

It swaps to real content after two seconds so you can see both states. #css

Underrated skill: writing the message that goes with the bug report. "It is broken" costs somebody an hour. "It 500s when the title has an apostrophe" costs them four minutes. #dev

Rename things. Seriously. Spend ten minutes renaming the three worst names in whatever you are working on and watch how much easier the next hour gets. #dev

Git tip that took me too long: commit before you try the risky thing, not after it works. The whole point is the rope, and you tie it first. #dev

Something I am sitting with: ambition and contentment are not opposites. You can want more and still be grateful for where your feet are. The people who cannot do both burn out or stall. #faith