There is a lof of talk these days about building systems that don’t require trust. On paper this has some appealing characteristics, and throughout history we have seen the issues that arise from unquestionable centralized authority, but right now I think we are also seeing the impacts of missing trust in the analog (physical) realm.

Over the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to see how a variety of teams
and companies build software. Along with that (like many others in the field) I’ve kept up with the content coming through various aggregators. Among the many things that every team has to decide is how they are going to actually build and maintain a project(s). We make decisions like:

Last year I started working on a new React app. I was late to the React game, having only started using it with React 16 I had experience with some existing React projects, but this was an opportunity to start something new. Additionally I was starting out small with one focused use case, but if that was successful [it was!] the app would grow to encompass quite a few screens and tools.

I realized something similar a few years back. Discovery is arguably easier than ever, but it’s also super easy to fall into just listening to what you know from established playlist.

I started my career as a software engineer working on a lot of data visualization projects. After a couple years I switched to working primarily on backend services, and then after doing that for almost 8 years I had the opportunity to start working on frontend projects again. Since switching back I pay more attention to my digital experiences and notices the ones that surprise me or stand out. I wanted to share some of those experiences from 2021.