Nov 08, 2022

Fundamentals

The pendulum swinging back from “recreate everything in [insert SPA framework]” to “multi-page apps are pretty good, actually” is a timely reminder that focusing your energy on mastering the fundamentals is usually a smart bet.

Early in my career I was more of a Flash person. In terms of creative expression, it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to compared to sliced up images and table hell. But then CSS Zen Garden came along and opened my eyes to a radically different way. Not just a different way of building websites via semantic markup and external stylesheets, but a different way of thinking about them. A unique, living medium with its own inherent character and beauty. I was hooked, and left Flash in the rearview mirror.

Roughly 20 years later, I can say with confidence that focusing on the fundamentals — markup, CSS, and vanilla javascript — was the right choice. All that Flash-specific knowledge that I spent countless hours accumulating? Useless. Meanwhile, my web standards knowledge has stayed consistently relevant, useful, and in-demand. Tools change, fundamentals don’t.