What would you call a weird neighbor? Sus tenance.

As I was writing first paragraphs on a new design doc today, I realized that I used to suffer really badly from the blank page problem, the one where you agonize over a few first words or sentences of a new text for way longer than it's worth. And these rays I rarely experience it anymore - at work at least.

I think this comes down to two simple things:

• We have document templates for most stuff we write: designs, proposals, incident comms, etc. The template is not a blank page, it has a list of things you should consider writing, you don't need to spend mental effort figuring out your own structure every time.
• You are allowed to write the doc in any order: I often start with the design itself and come back to background/motivation parts later. You are also allowed to edit the template: it's just a prompt, not a law.

#technicalWriting

So I wanted to use ChatGPT to generate some getting-started tutorials for GopherJS, and it did pretty well! it explained how to install it, wrote a simple hello-world and so on. Then I asked it what is the license for the text it generated and, well,... I guess I'll write the tutorial myself.

If you need to play devil's advocate to someone playing devil's advocate, what's it called? Pagan gods' advocate?

I think I learned with a surprise: a good, catchy title is really important for a design doc or proposal success. Even though it doesn't necessarily improve its chances of getting approved in the short-term, it makes it easy to remember, find and reference in future. Which means your ideas may have (hopefully positive) impact beyond your own projects.

#softwareEngineering #technicalWriting

@dev@microblog.pub has no native iOS app (at least yet). But PWAs are a thing, so I spent some time today, optimizing my microblog theme to the mobile screen. Most of the effort went into dealing with overflows and making sure nothing causes horizontal scrolling (very annoying on a touch screen) or wastes screen space too much.

As a bonus, threw in a PWA manifest, so it really behaves a lot like an app, and easily accessible from the home screen.

Overall, I'm pretty happy, except with the markdown editor I plugged in. On safari autocorrection doesn't work properly for some reason, but it’s usable.

Every time I come across an iOS 6 or before UI screenshot I realize that I miss skeuomorphic interfaces so much. Flat and cartoon-ish modern UIs just have no unity or cohesion to them...

I generally try to be polite to recruiters, recognizing they have a difficult job. But sometimes it gets absurd:

Thursday: recruiter sends a connection request with a job opportunity in it. Monday: I accept the request, but politely decline the job. Tuesday: recruiter acknowledges my response, saying they are happy to stay in touch. Thursday: recruiter sends me exactly the same job opportunity.