Tessera

@heydonworks.com has been busy building HYPERBLAM, a declarative, dependency-free implementation of the Web Audio API that lets you create pedal boards, drum machines, and sampled instruments using nothing but HTML… 😍 🎵 hyperblam.how

Hyperblam Docs Home

Documentation for HyperBlam. Make HTML make music.

hyperblam.how

The most dangerous gap in engineering right now is not incompetence. It is confident incompetence. Engineers who can defend every decision in a code review and go completely quiet when something breaks in production... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The rise of confident incompetence

Why the most dangerous gap in software engineering is the one we cannot see

medium.com

We've never treated human expression as a finite resource. The models are starting to disagree... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The machines need feeding

AI needs human thought to stay coherent. The models are already noticing.

medium.com

Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Vatican published a formal doctrinal letter about AI this month. It's not about religion. It's about what we risk losing. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The oldest institution in the room

What it means that the Vatican had something to say about AI

medium.com

Engineers are doing two jobs right now. Only one of them is tracked. The people burning out aren't the ones who can't handle the pace. They're the ones taking both jobs seriously. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The burnout problem in engineering

What high standards cost right now

medium.com

Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Continuing to explore some fun retro vibes over on @codepen.io...!!! 😁 👾 🎮 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

GameBoy

...

codepen.io

Going to show my age here with this vintage VHS tape inspired @codepen.io creation....!!! 😅 💜 📼 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

Vintage VHS blank tapes

...

codepen.io

Putting a name against an output isn't the same as being responsible for it. Most organisations haven't noticed the difference yet... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Ownership without understanding

Why putting a name against something isn’t the same as being responsible for it

medium.com

AI didn't remove the slow work. It just made skipping it easier. The slow phase never produced commits or closed tickets. It just meant someone understood the problem before anyone opened a laptop. That's why it's the first thing to go... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The invisible phase

AI didn’t remove the slow work, it just made skipping it easier

medium.com

Something's happening to the web. Not a quality problem exactly, the landing pages are competent, the copy is clear, the design is clean. But you can't remember any of them five minutes later... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Fast, functional, forgettable

When everything is easy to build, nothing is easy to remember

medium.com

She said fine. She meant functional within constraints you can't see. Most engineering managers have no idea their team members are running a calculation about whether this organisation can hold their life. By the time it becomes visible, she's already decided. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The awareness problem in engineering

Why some of your best engineers are leaving and you never saw it coming

medium.com

The entry-level numbers have shifted. The leadership numbers mostly haven't. That's not a pipeline problem. By mid-career, most women in engineering have enough data to know exactly what's happening... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The diversity problem in engineering

Why the broken rung isn’t an accident

medium.com

The messy apology lands harder than the polished one. Not because of the words. Because you can see the cost of sending it. Once you know that, everything else looks different. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Proof of humanity

What gets lost when communication gets polished

medium.com

The checklist for building agents assumes a human is in the room at every step. Evaluating the output. In agentic workflows that step gets optimised away. When something goes wrong in a chain of automated decisions, what does the trail look like? Who owns the output? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Do you need an agent for that?

The question assumes someone is asking it.

medium.com

You didn't build a dependency on an API. You built it on a company. Its ethics, its political exposure, its CEO's willingness to say no in public. Most risk assessments didn't cover that. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

What your AI risk assessment didn’t cover

AI providers aren’t neutral infrastructure and the last week has proved it.

medium.com

A contributor opens a PR. The code is clean, the tests pass. The reviewer asks a question. The author can't explain it because they didn't write it. The reviewer approves it anyway. One PR like this is a minor risk. A year of them is a codebase nobody actually owns... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The understanding problem in engineering

Why understanding is becoming engineering’s most ignored risk

medium.com

If someone writes clean, well-structured code, AI can accelerate them. If someone writes spaghetti, AI just helps them write it faster. AI doesn't fix fundamentals. It amplifies them. And that's widening the gap inside teams, not closing it. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The gap AI won’t close

Why equal access to AI tools is creating unequal outcomes in engineering teams

medium.com

"Create a caricature based on everything you know about me." People are celebrating how accurately AI can profile them and nobody finds that strange... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The data you were delighted to give away

How viral AI trends became the most successful data collection strategy ever invented

medium.com

You write something useful, AI trains on it, six months later it gives someone your answer with zero attribution and zero traffic back. The open web ran on: create value, get found, benefit. AI runs on: create value, never get found again... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

AI is breaking the open web

AI companies are consuming the open web while destroying the reasons people contribute to it

medium.com

Looks like Microsoft have just launched a new Inclusive Design website which has been built through co‑design with disabled and neurodivergent collaborators, the new experience focuses on adaptability, usability, and real‑world inclusion... 😍 inclusive.microsoft.design

Microsoft Inclusive Design

Microsoft Inclusive Design is a practice that anyone who creates and manages products and services can use to build more inclusive experiences for everyone. Get the principles, guidebooks, workshop to...

inclusive.microsoft.design

If you're leading a team or function: how do you know people are telling you the truth? Not in theory. Not because you have an open-door policy. In practice. In the actual moments when you propose something that won't work... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The honesty problem in engineering

Why the people around you have stopped telling you the truth

medium.com

Sharing this because I think Buttered Crumpet is the best typeface name ever, and also because Wallace and Gromit are awesome.... 😊 jamieclarketype.com/case-study/w...

Radio buttons are built into browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another library to rebuild them? How did a native browser control become this complicated? 😢 paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shad...

The Incredible Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button

Radio buttons are built into web browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another UI library that rebuilds radio buttons from scratch? Why does rendering a radio button require multiple depe...

paulmakeswebsites.com