Forms: label every field, and put the label above it, not inside it as a placeholder. A placeholder vanishes the moment somebody starts typing, which is exactly when they need it. #design
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Form validation rule I wish was law: tell me what IS allowed, not just that what I typed is not. "Invalid password" helps nobody. #design
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
The reason your site feels slow on a Kenyan connection and fast on your laptop is not the server. It is the eleven things it downloads before it draws anything. #dev
Keyboard shortcut that gave me hours back: multi cursor. Learn it in whatever editor you use. It is the one that feels like a superpower. #dev
Spent today writing documentation instead of features. Felt unproductive. Will feel extremely productive in four months. #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
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
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
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
Long one about burnout, because somebody needs it.
I hit a wall in March. Not dramatic, no breakdown. I just opened the editor one morning and felt nothing. Did that for about five weeks....
Mtu akikuambia "ni kitu kidogo tu" jua hiyo project ni ya miezi mitatu.
Cows have best friends and get stressed when separated. There are actual studies measuring heart rate. #science
Project idea for someone with more time than me: a proper directory of Kenyan APIs. Payments, SMS, logistics, government. Half of them you only hear about from a friend of a friend. #ideas #kenya
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
Long one about asking for help.
I once spent nine days on a bug. Nine. It was a caching layer returning a stale value in one specific case and I was convinced it was my own logic....
Nobody reads your error message, they read the first four words. Put the fix there. 'Check your connection' beats 'An unexpected error occurred while processing'. #design
Nilijaribu kuexplain kwa mum kazi yangu. Nikasema natengeneza website. Akauliza, 'na hizo zinamalizika lini?'. Swali gumu.
The Eiffel Tower gets about 15 centimetres taller in summer. Iron expands with heat. It also leans slightly away from the sun. #science
Short one for whoever is tired: the work will be there tomorrow. It is remarkably good at waiting. Go to sleep.
A thing about working alone: you will have days with nothing to show. They still count. The week is the unit, not the day. #ideas
Wombat droppings are cube shaped. The intestine has sections of different elasticity that shape it. This is real and somebody won a prize for proving it. #science
Your side project does not have to become a business. It is allowed to just be a thing you made because you wanted it to exist. #ideas
The best code review question is not "is this right". It is "what happens when this gets something it did not expect". #dev
Every framework you learn teaches you the framework. Every bug you chase to the bottom teaches you the machine. Chase more bugs. #learning
Caching is easy. Knowing when to throw it away is the whole job. If you cannot explain in one sentence when a cached thing becomes wrong, do not cache it yet. #dev
What is one thing you believed about this industry when you started that turned out to be completely wrong?
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
Test on the actual phone. Not the browser pretending to be one.
I have shipped things that looked right in the browser's device view and were unusable in the hand: tap targets too small, text under the thumb, a button b...
Unapo-push kwa main bila kutest. Mimi ndio huyo. Sijabadilika.
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.
If your site needs JavaScript to show text that already exists on the server, you have made the page slower for everyone to make it easier for you. Sometimes that trade is right. Make it on purpose. #dev
Worship and work both get easier when you stop performing them for whoever might be watching. #faith
A giraffe's neck has seven vertebrae. Exactly the same number as yours. They are just enormous. #science
The Great Rift Valley is pulling apart about six millimetres a year. Slow enough to ignore, fast enough that in ten million years there is a new ocean through here. #kenya
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
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
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
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
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
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