A bit of a quieter one on the reading front this week. Perhaps there’s less being published by the folks I read? But we’ve certainly been busy at Web Directions–here’s what’s coming up! AI and Software Engineering Unconference We’re hosting our second AI and Software Engineering unconference, in Sydney. It’s free, on Wednesday May 21st […]
I’ve often told the story of how it was an interest in AI that, as much as anything else, that drew me to computer science in the 1980s. That was the era of expert systems and symbolic logic. Our final-year elective—the first and only time AI was covered in my degree—was, from memory, almost entirely about hill-climbing algorithms. […]
One of the emerging concerns with LLMs is what Christopher Noessel, keynote speaker at UX Australia this August, calls deskilling—“when users lose skills they previously had, but handed off to the AI.” Others are more blunt, like James Anderson, who writes in a more thoughtful piece than the title might suggest: People often talk about […]
For 3 decades now (indeed a little more) my life has revolved around the Web. Developing for it, developing software to help others develop for it, writing about it, teaching about it, talking about it. Curiously the last couple of weeks’ roundups have had some backwards looking aspects to them–last week we had a refresher […]
Front-end development has long been about much more than just aesthetics, though the engineering aspects of the front end are still often undervalued. But as we know, front end development has evolved into a critical engineering discipline essential to performance, security, scalability, and of course user outcomes. Web Directions Code 2025 is your team’s once-a-year […]
Last week we took a week off for the East weekend. We did however post a substantial wrap up for our first unconference, on AI and Software Engineering–so please do take a look. You’ll get a sense of what experienced software engineers and engineering leaders are thinking about when it comes to the impact of […]
Yesterday, we ran an in-person unconference with a big question at its heart: what does software engineering look like in the age of large language models? We weren’t so much interested in prompt hacks or productivity tools. We weren’t asking how to pass LeetCode with ChatGPT, or automate our Jira boards. We were trying to […]
A quarter of a century ago this week, A List Apart published A Dao of Web Design, something I wrote about how to think about the web, and design for it. I’m working on a piece or two revisiting this, and have the privilege of speaking on this topic at CSS Day in June, since […]
Isaiah Berlin was something very rare these days, a public intellectual. An academic, he also wrote more popular books and essays, including The Hedgehog and the Fox. The hedgehog, he writes ‘view[s] the world through the lens of a single defining idea’, whole the fox ‘draw[s] on a wide variety of experiences and for whom […]
Nearly two dozen articles, talks and more this week, from new CSS that will finally, finally allow us to style the select elements, to a 3 and a half hour video on how LLMs work from someone who really knows. We’ve also got a couple of bonus talk videos on Conffab (no signup required) There’s […]
Some topics are new, rapidly evolving, and exploring them doesn’t fit neatly into traditional conference structures. They can benefit instead from unconferences—participant-driven events emphasizing emerging conversations and collective exploration, rather than predefined, organizer-driven agendas. So, Web Directions will host a new ad hoc series of these unconference-style gatherings, centered on intriguing and emerging topics. Each […]
Is there more great content being published? Are my antennae just getting better? Perhaps it’s an improved workflow? One thing’s certain—it’s definitely not more free time! Yet somehow, the weekly reading roundup keeps growing. You might ask: What’s the point of these eclectic roundups? Why should you read them? And why do I invest time […]
This week we’ve got another roundup of great articles and more, across CSS, JavaScript, performance, accessibility, design, some history with an ancient website and even more ancient computer, and of course, more than a little about writing software with AI. Last week I had the privilege to record a conversation with Jeremy Howard, now of […]
We’ve just released the first round of speakers for this year’s Code conference thing place in Meliruen (and online) June 12th and 13th. So, what’s Code focussed on in 2025 and why should you and your team attend? The front end grows up For too long, front-end development has been viewed as mere decoration—the attractive surface laid […]
This week we released the videos from the ‘front of the front end’ track at Web Directions Developer Summit, on the heels of the recent keynote videos. All are available to Conffab Pro members (that’s just $19.95 a month or $195 a year), alongside nearly 1,000 presentations from past Web Directions (and other) conferences. But for our wonderful […]
Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development
Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney
