Web Development

Modern web development techniques, frameworks, and best practices for building fast, accessible websites.

9 Articles

Web Development

The Case for a Virtual File System in Node.js

Try to run a Node.js application without a real filesystem and watch how quickly it falls apart. require() reads files. fs.readFile() reads files. Template...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez8 min read
Web Development

Collaborative Editing Is Harder Than You Think

Google Docs handles real-time collaborative editing for millions of users. It looks effortless — you type, your cursor moves, your collaborator's edits appear...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez9 min read
Web Development

The Art of Dithering: Beautiful Images With One Bit

Lucas Pope's Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the most visually striking games ever made, and it uses exactly two colors: black and white. One bit per pixel....

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez10 min read
Web Development

Scroll Fade Is a UX Antipattern and You Should Stop Using It

You've seen it on every marketing site, SaaS landing page, and portfolio built in the last five years. You scroll down the page and content fades in from...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez7 min read
Web Development

The Worst UX Anti-Patterns and How to Fix Them

Last week I tried to adjust the cookie preferences on a major airline's website. The 'Accept All' button was a bright blue, impossible to miss. The 'Manage...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez10 min read
Web Development

The Small Web Is the Best Part of the Internet

Open a browser tab and navigate to any major website. You'll see the same thing: cookie consent banners, newsletter pop-ups, autoplaying videos,...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez8 min read
Web Development

When WebAssembly Isn't Faster Than JavaScript

Last month I spent a Saturday rewriting a Rust-to-WASM image metadata parser in TypeScript. The WASM version had been in production for eight months. It worked...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez11 min read
Web Development

Every Layer of Review Makes Your Team Slower

A startup ships a bug to production. Management's response: add a code review requirement. Another bug slips through. Response: require two reviewers. Then a...

Elena VasquezElena Vasquez8 min read
Web Development

Pyodide: Running Real Python in the Browser via WebAssembly

Python in the browser has been a dream since the early 2010s, and every attempt has had the same problem: Python is too deeply tied to CPython's C runtime to...

Marcus RodriguezMarcus Rodriguez8 min read