Friday: @nerdy.dev gives a talk @cascadiajs.com blitzing through tons of cool CSS things I want to go learn about. Monday: @joshwcomeau.com has just published a blog post about one I'm super excited to dive into, `@starting-style`. It can be used to animate an element's initial render! <3 you both

That’s a wrap on another @cascadiajs.com conference! The vibes were immaculate, talks were inspiring, and the people were invigorating! I leave with new ideas, new friends, and the relief I can finally get a full night of sleep again Can’t wait to do it all over again next year!

Simon coming through with the best offer!

Looking for a choreographer to help us figure out how to do this as the first dance at our wedding in March 👀

I’m cruising through Portland today, where should I stop for a late lunch? I know there’s a bunch of Portland foodies on here!

Tons of great tips in the replies here and they aren’t specific to CYC. If you’re going to @cascadiajs.com or @squiggleconf.com or any of the other amazing conferences the tips still apply! I’ve done everything at conferences and still find new tips and remember forgotten ones from posts like this.

SeattleJS social tomorrow and then the Cascadia afterparty next week! So many good times to look forward to in the next week. Also I heard we might have free food and beer at the CascadiaJS afterparty 👀

What sort of training routine was needed for Steve Aoki to get so good at throwing cakes?!

The pizza at JTT is shockingly good! Also I heard some cool speakers from @cascadiajs.com will be coming to hang out with us!

What's the state of the art in Typescript formatting these days? Is prettier still the way to go for new projects or has @biomejs.dev caught up? Does anyone have experience with @prettier/plugin-oxc? I'm looking for recommendations for formatting typesafe-ts!

I've been crystallizing the mental model that LLMs are simply a dramatic improvement to the '10s-era next-word-suggestion feature of smartphone keyboards. It has been a surprisingly helpful worldview, as the keyboard feature is less complex and easier to reason about. For example:

I think of it like a power saw. I still do all the designing, measuring, lining up a piece of wood securely, and apply the power saw where I want the wood to be cut. Once that’s done, the sawing is faster. Whenever I leave it unattended for more than 2-3 actions I get 💩 code. Also be nice

Floated the river in Leavenworth with friends this weekend. On the drive back over the cascades we were treated to some exquisite stargazing! Even my phone camera was able to pick up the Milky Way 🌌 It took a few tries to get the 📷 camera settings just right.

I’m making a futile attempt to write a Typescript type constraint that `never` can’t satisfy, but never extends EVERYTHING. Closest I’ve gotten is that I can detect never being provided as a type parameter, but I can’t convince typescript to produce a type error when I do. 😱

No cheating, post the last pic of your pet.

What GIF pops up when you type your name? I was 99% confident this one would show up. Fun fact: the audio that goes with it is my ring tone!

Slightly diminish a band: Linkin Lawn

Today I learned that a `Promise`-returning function which is _not_ async can synchronously throw an `Error` and it will _not_ be handled by `Promise.catch`. Example: ```ts function FU(): Promise<string> { throw new Error("missed me!"); } FU().catch(err => ... ) // uncaught error "missed me!" ```

Straight out of Erewhon, where having health issues of any kind is a moral failing.

Flying to Europe for the first time in a long time and the plane food isn’t 💩 When did that happen?!

Vibe coders and developers whenever a coding AI drops

Super excited for the Nuxt team to be able to focus on Nuxt and the ecosystem full time!

TS puzzle: type a generic function that accepts a nullable value or a void function that returns a nullable value. Must be able to narrow the argument at runtime and either call the function or return the value. ``` function foo<T>(arg: (()=>T | null) | T | null ): Some<T> { ... } ``` Any ideas?

🌶️ JS/TS take: Don't use `null`. There are 3 cases where a "no value" value is needed: 1. uninitialized variables 2. accessing members that don't exist 3. when an operation can't produce a successful value 1 & 2 are always undefined. For #3, use undefined or an Optional implementation, like this

Alright chat what do we think of abusing the TypeScript type system to provide custom error messages?

I’d rather queue for 5-10 minutes while in transit than risk needing to check my carry on. Checked bags typically mean waiting 30+ mins once I land. They also come with the risk of the airline/airport losing my bag.

I heard glassmorphism is in again?! I use glassmorphism on allandeutsch.com in a few places. Check out the nice inner glow around the edges.

Sometimes a button would rather be <a href="/pride"> link. I think it's wonderful that is possible! a 12/n

Improve your APIs by returning error messages that help the consumer fix their issue. Example GET API on `api/user/[id]` with a request at `api/user/`: ❌ "Error: user id not specified" ✅ "Error: Requested `api/user/` without an id. Try `api/user/[id]` instead"

How is OpenAI supposed to compete for business customers and users abroad if they are compelled by a court to breach their data retention contracts? Also this means OpenAI and their API customers with users in Europe can’t comply with GDPR data deletion requests.

In honor of pride month, a proud button! Button 11/n

Insane how powerful the web platform is getting! The past few years we’ve had such rapid improvements and the pace is staying high 🚀

Added a readme for `Optional`. It includes: - An explanation of why you might want to use `Optional` - an overview of the `Optional` interface - An example using `Optional` to simplify code Check it out and let me know what you think!

Tired of manually checking `if(value === null) {...}` before using a value? I made a better Option(al)! Instead of writing functions that return `Result | null`, wrap the result in an `Optional`. With an Optional it's possible to do things like `maybeString().map( s=>s.length ).value_or(0)`.

TIL that Mexico takes their elections seriously in a couple unique ways compared to the US: 1. They have their elections on a weekend so it is easier for everyone to vote 2. During election weekend, alcohol sales are banned (exception for tourist areas but require it be served with food)

The soundtrack for the moment: Bad DOGE No Biscuits

Potatoes are overrated and the other popular root vegetables are more delicious.

TIL the history of sort() and toSorted() in JS! It turns out sort came first and was in-place. When it came time to add a non-mutating sort, @ashley-c.bsky.social went with a separate method to be consistent with other langs (python, kotlin) and containers (Record, Tuple). The more you know 🧠

The highest pace of learning I had was building game engines. I went deep on so many topics - generic interfaces and API design, memory management, performance optimization, parallelism, data structures, etc. I even got involved in c++ standardization! Trying to improve the wheel is 🧠📈📈

How is it that every streaming platform knows I want to skip the intro, recap, credits, and preview, yet none of them let me skip downloading them when saving episodes for offline viewing???

When a function is getting too long for me to track the full context of what’s going on, I like to refactor it into smaller functions. Smaller functions are explicitly named steps. Their isolation makes testing easier. Passing arguments forces me to reconsider variable names and improve them.

Saw this cool button design on youtube and decided to do a lil riff on it using changes to the inset shadow to add to the 3d effect. It's subtle but when the glowing ring is down on click, the edge lighting on the button is bigger. Button 10/n original: youtu.be/b38It0dCWwg

I’m excited to be speaking at @cascadiajs.com this year! The web platform has been my home as a developer for the past few years and it has improved a ton in that time. My talk will be about the code i no longer write and tools I don’t need anymore, and the platform features that replaced them.

Adding a subtle scale to an button on hover and active states helps it echo the behavior of a real button moving up and down. Subtlety is key as the effect is quite noticeable. This button is only using `scale: 1.01` and `scale: 0.99`! Button 9/n

Did you know that CSS `box-shadow` accepts a comma-separated list of shadows? That means a single box can have multiple shadows! Layering multiple shadows on a single element adds more depth and dimension to the element. Button 8/n

Transparent shadows do a better job blending with the background. Notice that the top button's shadow has a muddy grayish ring on the outside? The bottom button's shadow is transparent, and blends much more gracefully with the background. Buttons 6 & 7, background colorized circa 2025.

In real life, shadows only darken whatever they touch - never obscuring it. Shadows in UIs should imitate those in real life by similarly NOT obscuring the background. This is done by using a shadow color with transparency. Transparency makes shadows more subtle and life-like. Button 7/n

What do we think the odds are that a new $400M jet comes with some eavesdropping devices pre-installed?

One trick I use for almost every button is a subtle Y translation and some changes to the box-shadow on hover/focus & active. The translation is only -3px for hover/focus & -1px when active but it makes buttons feel much more tactile! Button 6/n

The secret to making friends as an adult is putting in the effort to host/organize things. Everyone wants to do fun stuff, but the little bit of activation energy it takes to plan something fun prevents most people from ever starting. It can be simple. “Let’s go for a walk” just do stuff.