You don’t want to hire me

I’m a terrible employee, there, I said it! I’m one of those people that takes way too long to develop something. That is probably due to the fact that I want to know how to build something properly. When I start to build something, I want to know everything there is to know about it; from what each button does, to what every component’s function is, and which parts will be editable via the CMS (Content Management System). I probably end up drawing a lot of sketches of all the different states a page or certain component can be in. Everything that leaves my editor should be usable by everybody!

Hey, but I do research too!

Excuse me for sounding jaded. I’m not saying other developers don’t do research; every developer does research. I’m saying that they adhere to deadlines. If their deadlines allowed, most developers I know would do a lot more research. But here is the thing: I don’t care about deadlines! I’m not the right person for your project if you want it done fast; I’m the right person if you want it done properly.

No fair, I write amazeballs JavaScript shizzle yo

That may be so, but do you consider every user when you build your application? If the answer is yes, woohoo! You are my new super duper friend! You can get a whisky on me whenever you’re in Arnhem (send me a tweet and we’ll figure something out). If not, I’d like you to read this quote (read it anyway, it’s really good):

When user experience doesn’t consider _all users_, it should be called some user experience.
Yes, SUX.

So ask yourself, do you work on a UX or SUX designed project? If it’s the latter, I’ve got bad news for you: you’re not getting any whisky from me.

We need to consider everyone—including people without a body (we need be prepared for when heads in a jar become a thing)—from children, to stoned teenagers, developers that navigate by keyboard, a hungover lumberjack that just woke up and got blinded by a computer display, to elderly people that double click on links.

Getting real tired of your shit, this is not how the world works

Probably not, but it should. Sorry for sounding jaded again, but everything we do now is pointless unless we build it for the future! Will your amazeballs React application still work in 4242? Too far into the future to predict? Okay, how about 2100? Still too far to predict? How about 2020? You don’t know? That’s only four years from now. Meanwhile, the first webpage ever to go online still exists, and it works! After 25 years it still works because it is static.

Oh come on, this is getting ridiculous…

I know right. It’s true though. Static doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be generated. Static simply means a HTML (HyperText Markup Language) file is served from a server, not generated by JavaScript in a browser. If you generate HTML files with a CMS and your CMS breaks down, nothing has really changed: your website still works, files are still served; disaster diverted! Besides, static pages are—in most cases anyway—much faster than pages that have to be generated on runtime.

But I need to put live stuff in it, like show off my tweets and such

Don’t worry, you still can! Static pages still allow for JavaScript to be loaded; it’s just that static pages work without JavaScript too. That doesn’t mean you cannot add JavaScript to fetch new data and add that to the page, you can; your pages will work like they do now, but they’ll also work if something goes wrong.

I wouldn’t want to live in a house that collapsed if a fundamental technology—say electricity—failed.

Yeah whatever, what’s your point dude?

My point is that in the ten years of my career I’ve never once worked for a company that really cared about their end result—which might have been poor employer selection on my part though—, and I’m sort of done with that (again, jaded much?).

If you dont go all the way, why bother move at all.

I believe we as developers want to, and indeed need to, value our craft and projects we create. We all want to create beautiful things, and most of us do just that. I would very much like it if all those beautiful creations out there would work for all humans—hell, make it work for your cat too!