This looks like it could be an interesting library of interface patterns.
Every UI control you roll yourself is a liability. You have to design it, test it, ship it, document it, debug it, maintain it — the list goes on.
It makes you wonder why we insist on rolling (or styling) our own common UI controls so often. Perhaps we’d be better off asking: What are the fewest amount of components we have to build to deliver value to our users?
It’s great to see the evolution of HTML happening in response to real use-cases—the turbo-charging of the select element just gets better and better!
This is a really interesting proposal, and I have thoughts.
The best reason to write a library in plain JavaScript is that it lasts forever. This is arguably JavaScript’s single most underrated feature. While I’m sure there are some corner cases, JavaScript from 1999 that ran in Netscape Navigator will run unaltered, alongside modern code, in Google Chrome downloaded yesterday. That is true for very few programming environments.
And yet:
Of course, most people’s experience with JavaScript is that it ages like milk. Reopen a node repository after 3 months and you’ll find that your project is mired in a flurry of security warnings, backwards-incompatible library “upgrades,” and a frontend framework whose cultural peak was the exact moment you started the project and is now widely considered tech debt.
In some ways, the fervor around AI is reminiscent of blockchain hype, which has steadily cooled since its 2021 peak. In almost all cases, blockchain technology serves no purpose but to make software slower, more difficult to fix, and a bigger target for scammers. AI isn’t nearly as frivolous—it has several novel use cases—but many are rightly wary of the resemblance. And there are concerns to be had; AI bears the deceptive appearance of a free lunch and, predictably, has non-obvious downsides that some founders and VCs will insist on learning the hard way.
This is a good level-headed overview of how generative language model tools work.
If something can be reduced to patterns, however elaborate they may be, AI can probably mimic it. That’s what AI does. That’s the whole story.
There’s very practical advice on deciding where and when these tools make sense:
The sweet spot for AI is a context where its choices are limited, transparent, and safe. We should be giving it an API, not an output box.
The joy of getting hands-on with HTML and CSS.
Can you have too much semantics?
Five more articles on modern responsive design to close out the course.
A small but important addition to CSS.
Figuring out how Safari on iOS uses the Web Share API.