I write about code and my experiences in tech.
I was so excited to come to Brighton on March 12th 2026 to attend Web Day Out . It's been a long time since I regularly attended conferences. Since COVID, I've attended two, the other being Beyond Tellerrand . Both of them run by very good people, both with very good speakers and attendees. New Road in Brighton, UK Before COVID, in the early days of my web career, I was fortunate to take part in a…
Inspired by Paweł Grzybek who was inspired by Michael Crittenden . Like Section titled Like That the weather is getting warmer so we can all wear cute summery things. Using simple techniques to get better at completing 10-15 minutes of a project per day and seeing good results (book writing, piano, exercise). Daydreaming about learning languages — Spanish, French, sign language etc. Reconnecting a…
I'm writing a book for people who want to change careers and get into web development! To get updates and sneak peeks please sign up below ❤️ Email: Subscribe To sign up as a beta reader please send an email to switchtowebdev@gmail.com ❤️ Timeline October 2020 Section titled October 2020 I opened Google Docs. Inside, I wrote down everything I could think of about switching careers to web…
Code review is super important. At times I have worried that I've spent too long reviewing and not enough time working fast and breaking things. Today I was reminded that time spent on code review is worth its weight in gold. Contents Section titled Contents My Code Review Story Benefits of Code Review Summary My Code Review Story Section titled My Code Review Story I was invited to a 1 on 1…
What is your approach for understanding a brand new (complex!) codebase, whether open source or at a new job ? I posted this question in the form of a tweet earlier this month and got lots of honest and heartfelt answers from developers! In this blog post, I grouped the answers to help you learn how to approach a new codebase . What is your approach for understanding a brand new (complex!)…
A very mini list of things that I usually think of while I'm writing about life and tech, that have helped me to blog better! My number one tip is that a blog post does not have to be polished and perfect (nothing is ever perfect!) before you post it. This blog post is a great example. It had been a draft for a long time, and I was hesitant to publish it. I waited and waited, just in case I could…
It's hiring season! Do you want a new web developer job? You might call yourself a frontend (front-end/front end) engineer, a UI developer, a full-stack engineer, a software engineer, etc. There are many different and fun combinations of job titles! I will assume you develop things for the web, so you are a web developer. This post will give you, a web developer, tips on how to make a good…
I got the idea to write a my first ever retrospective for the year from Monica Lent . 🙏 What a year it has been. Back in February I had no idea what the rest of the year was going to look like. I even attended a comedy night in Berlin where one of the comedians joked that she had coronavirus, and the audience actually found it genuinely funny! I didn't get to fly and visit any of my family or…
In short, React's useCallback hook is used to wrap functions. It tells React to not re-create a wrapped function when a component re-renders, unless any of the useCallback's dependencies change. But when is it necessary to use useCallback? Most blog posts I have read on useCallback contain example code where a function wrapped in useCallback could just be moved outside of a component function body…
One day I decided I wanted to add anchor links to each of the sections in my blog posts. Over the past few months, I'd seen these links on a lot of pages—from official documentation pages to smaller blog posts. I find them really useful for sharing sections of pages with other people! To make the different sections of my blog posts shareable, I decided to add an anchor link to all of the section…
When I re-made my site with Eleventy, the pages didn't change much, but I had loads of fun adding new features. The most fun was webmentions and I'm here to convince you to add them! First, let me step back and explain why webmentions exist—the IndieWeb. IndieWeb Check out this official description of the IndieWeb: The IndieWeb is a community of individual personal websites, connected by simple…
In this post I'll compare my experience building my personal blogging site (the one you're on now) with two static site generators (SSGs) - Gatsby and Eleventy. The first version of my site was rolled out with Bootstrap CSS and no framework, the second and third used SCSS and again no framework. The fourth version was built with a popular static site generator (SSG) called Gatsby . This SSG uses…
When someone uses their browser to visit your website, the browser fetches files from your website's server. One example could be a CSS file. Once the CSS file has been fetched, the browser can cache (store) a copy of it. This means that, as the visitor browses your site, the CSS does not need to be fetched once again from the server. The advantages of caching a file are: one less network request…
I use a bookmarklet tool called Tota11y , which gives me a quick overview of my site's accessibility. I opened it on my site's homepage and clicked "link text". The tool flagged not one, but SIX inaccessible links. Woops! The homepage, GitHub, Twitter, and LinkedIn links were all flagged for the same reason. There was no text between their opening and closing <a> tags, only an SVG. Even though the…
Background Section titled Background I wanted to write my thoughts on remote working as I enter my sixth consecutive month of it. This remote working situation I am in is special because it was not a personal choice, nor would it have been allowed by my company under normal circumstances. As you may have guessed, I am working remotely due to the global corona virus pandemic. Before mid-March of…
Bookmarklets - a cool personal dev tool Section titled Bookmarklets - a cool personal dev tool I have just found out what bookmarklets (aka favelets - a term coined by my friend Tantek back in the early 2000s) are and I like 'em! So what are they? Bookmarklets run a JavaScript (JS) script against the DOM of the current document loaded in the browser. They allow a way to alter the DOM at the press…
A long, long time ago in a land before dev tools, there lived all of its predecessors. These ancestors were more basic and didn't offer the wealth of tools we enjoy today. But, they certainly paved the way! The beginning Section titled The beginning How could developers view code in their browsers in the early nineties? They could check out view source ( see how to open view source here ). They…
The other day I was discussing CSS custom properties with Jeremy when I noticed something. When using custom properties, some (but not all) of the custom property values do not show up in the computed values in Chrome dev tools. Jeremy tried the dev tools in Firefox and found the same thing. However, when the same values declared as custom properties are declared as regular CSS properties, the…
There was a bug in some of my code recently. A skip link was not working correctly. When it was focused and enter was pressed, focus was placed on the main content. Seemed okay. But, when tab was pressed to go into the main content, the focus went off to some place I could not see! I spent a few minutes trying to figure it out but could not. Then, I searched for how to programatically find focus.…
What is a pandemic anyway? I mean, why did I never actually properly learn what that term meant? There have been pandemics in the past. Sure, I know that. But were the importance of these ever conveyed to me? I can say “not really”. This is the very first pandemic-type experience I’ve ever lived through. The fact it has affected the whole world, will change some lives forever, and the behaviour of…
May the 4th be with you! If you enjoyed that greeting you'll love the nerdy stuff that is to follow. Over one evening, I wrote down some of the CSS tips I've learned over a few years of being a developer and put them in this post 😃 . I saved my most important tip for the end of the list. Enjoy! CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. This means that they are style sheets that cascade. Take a look…
The goal of this post is to highlight a handful of useful HTML elements for improving a page's accessibility, and show that every developer can learn about and write accessible HTML! You may be aware that ARIA roles are often used with HTML elements. I haven't written about them here, as it's good to see how HTML written without ARIA can still be accessible. I'll write a separate post describing…
Recently, I've been chatting about accessibility with two of the biggest experts on the subject. Also, the web developers I work with at N26 take accessibility very seriously. This got me interested enough to read some blog posts on the subject. Many of these posts mentioned 'landmark roles' - one of which is 'navigation'. The navigation landmark is for identifying groups of links that help users…
Image by hugues-dbm I was recently asked by more than one junior developer about how to progress to a mid-level developer. As a junior developer looking to move towards a mid role myself, I wanted to collect a few of my thoughts in a blog post. This isn't a checklist of skills that a workplace might typically give you. Instead, it's a collection advice from my own, lived experiences! I've worked…
In spoken languages, the imperative is used to express commands/give orders. This helps me remember how programming languages use the imperative. In programming languages like JavaScript the imperative is used for giving orders that describe to the computer how to do something! An example of imperative programming in JavaScript is a for loop that does something to items in an array. Check out the…
@Sareh88 wants to set us a challenge - giving back to the web community. Can you think about the things people have done to help you? Is there a way you can give the gift of your support to help support those who need it as much as you once did? @CSSconfeu #CSSconfEU2019 — Amber Wilson (@ambrwlsn90) May 31, 2019 What is giving back? It can mean so many things. What have people done for me?…
I think it’s important for junior developers to learn to see the bigger picture in projects. However, this can be hard for new developers, particularly those with no computer science background. I have been told by experienced developers that the ability to see the bigger picture comes with time and working on multiple large projects. As a junior developer who is looking to transition to…
What is important to you as a developer? Over time I've found that each developer has their own ideas of how to progress in their career, where they want to focus in the near future, and what being a good developer looks like. If you think about these things, what do you come up with? Personally, having come from a non-computer-science background, I’d very much like to gain some knowledge around…
Last time I wrote about coding up a design , I was only two weeks into the related project. Now, it has been weeks since I finished and I am documenting the remainder of my scribbled-down points in the event that I or someone else might find them useful in the future. The below points are formatted exactly how I wrote them in the heat of varying degrees of exasperation - enjoy! Check the most…
If you said "YES", how exciting! Well done, you :-) But wait ... it's not always a bed of roses. If you've already developed a real web page from a design, maybe you'll nod along to some of the points I have made below. The past two weeks, I’ve learned loads from building a static page using Gatsby (React) and SCSS (in this case CSS Modules, although I'd have been partial to some Styled…
I recently read a blog post that grouped developers into categories depending on how long they have worked as one. I felt a little proud that I wasn't in the 0-1 year category, but in the 1-2 year one. This made me want to write about other things about my new career that I feel proud of. How do I feel now that I've been a professional developer for more than a year? I certainly feel I have come a…
I visited a great place with lots of graffiti at the weekend, and decided I'd take one of my pictures from there and pixelise it - see the pixel version below and the original further down. Can't wait to practice more!
What I've written here is meant for developers but I think it could work for anyone :) I feel like this post could be part of a series all about my experiences as a new developer that I've written about over the past year. It's been great having the chance to experience becoming a developer and share my thoughts along the way. My idea for this post built up over a few months of working on a…
This post is split into three parts. Click and choose! Diary of my time in Scotland Tips from speakers used in this blog post ✨ Why this conference is special ✨ I will post a link to the official photos once they are out! (hint: they are good). See Katie Fenn 's terrific and poignant article on the conferences . Diary # Back to the top arrow Click this to go back to the top of the blog post At…
One month ago, I was invited by Vanessa and Michele to speak at the JSConf EU community lounge in sunny Berlin. This was a tremendous honour - not only would I be able to talk about how great codebar is to a crowd of eager attendees, but I'd be able to participate in both CSS and JSConf EU , and catch up with lots of old and new friends. Something I couldn't help noticing as soon as I arrived, was…
Firstly, what is pair programming? It’s two developers sitting together, usually at one computer, where one types code and the other checks the code. In essence, it involves two developers who are thinking about different aspects of the same programming feature, and are constantly communicating in order to keep their understanding in sync. Some of you may know this already. Apart from this very…
I love how photography allows you to be as creative as you like. I had some fun taking pics at Tempelhof Field today.
I got a new camera. It's really lovely. Why do people buy cameras though? Is it to take pictures of their friends, to sit there looking pretty but gathering dust, or to attempt to be recognised as a terrific photographer? Perhaps it is all or none of these. I got mine because I want to have a cool, small piece of equipment on me at all times that I can whip out and make some memories with. I'm not…
Yes, exactly!!!! — Amber Wilson (@ambrwlsn90) April 26, 2018 Apart from code, what makes a good developer? After a brilliant meeting with Richard , the tech lead at my company, where we discussed my progress as a developer and what I could start aiming for, I came away with some (what I think are) really nice insights from our discussion. I want to share those here. I think the advice here…
The first unconf I’ve ever been to just wrapped up and it’s been a really great experience. Not least because of the thoughtful, kind and funny people I was lucky enough to spend it with. First of all, I must say that I am exhausted from all of the fun, but I am tired in the best possible way. On top of the tiredness is a feeling of deep contentment, relaxation and all-round good vibes from my…
I’ve been wanting to write about psychology for a while now. However, despite having quite a few years of formal education in it, I was unsure where to begin. My love of psychology is still strong, despite having left the formal study and practice of it behind a couple of years ago. I love to chat about it with people who are as interested as I am in the beauty and mystery of the human mind. I…
Wait, some people have said this. But I'd like to politely voice the opinion that they are wrong. For almost two months, I have been working on a complex React project involving a complex SCSS implementation. I am new to such complex projects, and so have only just begun to really learn about what SCSS can do. And... there is a lot to learn. But, it is a beautiful mess ❤️ Before diving into the…
I am starting this post almost 4 months too late, but I want it here so I can be kept (at least a little) accountable for starting (and finishing!) as many books as I can. Most of the books I read are recommended by friends. Any others will either be completely random or based on my interest in science, design, psychology or philisophy. Some will be about things that I really think I should know…
I realised I published Newbie Dev Tips nearly seven months ago. I found it super interesting to reflect on my opinions then versus now :) If you want to get really good at a programming language, write stuff in it over and over, and only then take a deep dive into reading a book or watching a lot of tutorials about it. I’ve heard and lived this advice myself one hundred times over, and when I…
This is a bit of a retrospective post, because the things I’m going to talk about happened on the last day of January. It was the day before my new job began, and I’d been in Berlin for 10 days. I had signed up to a codebar Berlin meetup about a week before, as a student, and was really excited to go along and see what codebar in Berlin was like. Before I moved to Berlin, I’d been part of codebar…
Today I attended the Global Diversity CFP Day – Berlin style. There were 13 amazing mentors and over 20 students – all of us hosted by the awesome Stefan Judis and Irina Botea in the Contentful offices. The day was pre-planned for us by the great Peter Aitken . We watched inspiring educational videos, had discussions and completed exercises. The exercise which struck the biggest chord with the…
This post details how my January has gone so far, my reflections on it, and has an important message at the end. This January is almost over! How many of you have achieved goals you set out for yourself? And if you didn’t have goals, do you feel you’ve accomplished something good in the first month of 2018? Sometimes goals you set for yourself don’t get accomplished for one reason or another, and…
Equally importantly - what are you looking for? What people want is important. And that’s never truer for web developers and for the people who employ them. Hello people of the web. I am looking for a junior web developer position! Preferably in sunny Brighton by the sea 😎 However, please read on even if you are not based in Brighton! As a junior developer who has just finished her first…
(Originally published on SuperYesMore ) Your productivity is all about you. I don’t ever like to advocate for lists like “10 ways to boost your productivity today”. Productivity is personal. Everyone’s ideas about it are different. We all seek a definition of it, and when we find one that sounds sensible, we put precious energy into achieving it. However, if it’s someone else’s definition, there’s…