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Monthly reports

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Opportunities

I am a happy zero-based budgeting adopter, mostly through the YNAB app. Through their APIs, Martin integrates with YNAB to store a duplicate of all transactions in its database, complete with category and description. I believe this is a potentially useful set of data, one that is not usually available to oneself, and I wondered if there was an opportunity behind that.

What can I build with it?

I think any more knowledge about my financial status makes me feel more relaxed. Some examples of how this benefit can be triggered:

Alienation and acceleration - book review

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The world of time management books is vastly dominated by what I call the “USA-style” narrative. “Do these 5 things every day and your life will dramatically improve”, or “the hidden secret behind your secret weapon against…”. Books made to sell, with some scientific evidence, concrete suggestions, big claims. Even through this superficial description, I am pretty sure everyone interested in the topic knows what I mean.

Among the common traits these books share is that they propose an individualistic point of view of the problem. Everything is under the control of the individual. The problem, whatever root it has, is treated with changes in daily lifestyle. The widest groups of people they might focus upon are support groups, which serve the sole scope of sharing experiences about your individualities.

On starting too many projects

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One criticism that can be made to how I usually manage my life is that I start too many projects and finish too few of them. This has two effects on my productivity:

continuously starting new projects scatters my energy across too many directions, reducing the number of completed projects per unit of time,
many projects require me to leave things in a half-finished state (half-mounted furniture, half-cleaned keyboard, etc), massively increasing the confusion around me

From these two objective facts, many negative feelings develop:

`inputMode` HTML attribute

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

While working on a form with numeric inputs, I noticed Claude putting this attribute on them: inputMode="numeric".

Intrigued, I looked at the MDN page and it turns out the attribute exists to support different input styles, mostly related to what a smartphone will show in the keyboard tray. It can take values like tel, email, numeric and so on.

The attribute’s effect is limited to the keyboard, and it relies on the specific vendor to act on it. Nevertheless, I find it pretty useful to be able to change the keyboard between numeric and decimal depending on the value that needs to be entered in a form field.

`datalist` for range inputs

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The datalist tag has surprised me at least a couple time already. While I still consider native HTML inputs as inadequate and too rigid, I admit that thanks to the datalist tag the UX can improve a bit.

Today I was how far the native range inputs are from for ElasticUI range inputs, the one I currently use. I stumbled upon the MDN Web docs page and particularly on the list attribute: it can contain the id of a datalist component and to enhance the user experience of the input. It seems the only three ways these two tags can interact are:

Mutable `shared static` attributes in Javascript

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My understanding of the static keyword in JS classes has always been that it determined immutable attributes/methods that are available before not on a class instance but on the class constructor itself. Like with the Object class constrctor: it is possible to instantiate it, but some methods are available on the constructor too, like .fromEntries().

Let’s see a working example:

class MyClass {
 static attr1 = 'attr1'
 attr2 = 'attr2'

 static method1() { return 'method1' }

 method2() { return 'method2' }
}

console.group('Constructor')
console.log(MyClass.attr1)
console.log(MyClass.attr2) // <- doesn't throw, but undefined
console.log(MyClass.method1())
console.log(MyClass.method2()) // <- throws
console.groupEnd()

const instance = new MyClass()
console.group('Instance')
console.log(instance.attr1) // <- doesn't throw, but undefined
console.log(instance.attr2)
console.log(instance.method1()) // <- throws
console.log(instance.method2())
console.groupEnd()

As you can see, static method are available on the constructor only, while “normal” method only on instances. So far so good.

`:has()` pseudo-selector and current node parent

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today I was finally able to use the :has() pseudo-selector. I’ve heard about that in a superficial way through articles and comments, but I’ve never it in person.

Today at work I needed to implement a workaround, which consisted in setting some CSS rules to the parent of the current node. I’ve always thought it was impossible to achieve, but good folks updated this old question on StackOverflow, explaining how :has() could have helped.

Better viewport units for responsive design

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The issue is: using 100vh as a rule to measure the whole viewport height is just faulty on mobile. Ona side note, I belive most of the times this is a bad idea, and people actually want something different, but let’s avoid this topic.

I encountered this issue again today, where one of the web apps I work on has 100vh but now has also the need to be more mobile-friendly.

Web Components innerHTML and loading time

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While approaching the first lessons of Rob Eisenberg’s Web Components course, I stumpled upon a browser error that prevented every instance of a web component to run:

Failed to construct 'CustomElement': The result must not have children"

After many trials and errors, it turned out that adding the type="module" attribute fixed the issue. But why? I asked Rob directly in this tweet, and here’s his answer:

Technically, one shouldn’t alter the host attributes or children in the constructor (there’s a note on attributes but not children in the lesson; I’ll add more on that). Though, it will work in certain scenarios. Setting innerHTML in the constructor is an example of where it will work, depending on the timing.

Child rule does not mean child element

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I always tought that, either in SASS or in native CSS nested selector, it was possible only to refine a selector by appending attributes of child nodes. It turns out it isn’t so.

In other words, whenever the & is used in selectors it’s possible to write body & and it’ll create a legit selector. I expected that only refinements like & .some-children-class would work.

This is a partial example to show the mechanism: the haiku is green, while I would have expected it to be blue.

New trends in Javascript ecosystem

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Funeral of the anarchist Galli by Carlo Carrà

One of the benefits of being many years in the same field is to see things evolve. You get to know how things started, the reason that required them to change, and you see the process repeating over and over. You understand why things are the way they are right now. You get able to spot trends and patterns.

On losing faith in UX

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On January 28 Mark Hurst published the article “Why I’m losing faith in UX”, which received a lot of attention in the following days. The author describes a progressive decline in how UX is used: started as a way to create user-friendly tools, today it’s employed mostly for User eXploitation.

Stimulusjs and new hopes for backend frameworks

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Stimulusjs is a “modest Javascript framework for the HTML you already have”. It has a kind of MVC architecture and focuses on enhancing server-side generated HTML, allowing to gracefully inject Javascript behaviors via custom HTML attributes. Its unobtrusiveness and simplicity seem to have made it a good match for backend frameworks that want to extend their control client-side.

Command line interface guidelines

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Programs with command line as interface are unjustly stereotyped on two opposite fronts. On one side, non-technical users instantly feel awed and judge themselves as unable to use them. On the opponent side, some developers fall into spirals of fetishism where the less a software is easy to use, the more it is valuable and powerful.

UI frameworks and accessibility

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by ArtisanalPhoto on Unsplash

I’ve been a frontend developer for years but, honestly, I know nothing about web accessibility. That’s because of my past jobs: to spend time and money to make our product more accessible has never been an option, so I’ve never learned about it. To be honest, it wasn’t my employers/client’s fault too: often accessibility is considered a luxury more than an expression of civilization.

Programming under consumerism

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Recently I’ve thought a lot about consumerism and how we produce software today. I’ve tried many times bring order to my thoughts, but doubts and not enough free time are preventing me to find a position that I’m satisfied with. I have decided to release this text prematurely to use it as a foundation for discussion, in the hope that my ideas get sorted.

"I no longer build software"

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Today an interesting discussion appeared on HackerNews. Everything stared from a message on Github about an ex developer, Eric Diven, who left his job to become a carpenter. As he said, “The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there’s always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there’s that :-)”.

Alvar Aalto's church in Riola

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

During my vacation trip, I had the opportunity to see the only building made by Alvar Aalto in Italy: the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Riola.

It was a pleasing encounter on my path of learning about modernism. The church is bright and it emanates order and simplicity. I think it uses some techniques employed in factories to create a more soft and uniform light diffusion, avoiding direct light.

Rams

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Rams is a documentary about Dieter Rams, one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. The documentary was made by Gary Hustwit in 2018.

I won't say much about Rams: the film is very good and insightful, so my advice is to find some time to watch it.

Probably Rams is so famous today because his critiques to consumerism and industrial production have never been so actual. A call to produce "less but better" finds its space in a world where every person involved in the production, from design to selling, is asked to compromise quality to produce more.

The Rails Doctrine

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I found the Rails Doctrine page while watching this video from Sam Selikoff. The video itself is very interesting, give it a look if you're struggling daily with react - like me.

Back to the RoR Doctrine page: it's superb.

I already knew many of the concepts expressed in it. The conceptual battle between frameworks "a la Rails" and unopinionated frameworks (or even libraries) is not new to everyone who has been in web development in the last 10 years. But this text resumes all the things that I want to say about the tools I'm using during my job.

Cleaning up form UI

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is an article written by Tonsky about polishing UIs.

He starts from an (honestly already good) UI taken from IntelliJ IDEA and with some simple techniques he makes it even better. The most prominent technique is overlapping the UI with a grid to show the little imperfections present.

This simple technique can spot imbalances in many interfaces and doesn't require much effort. While not all the adjustments he made are wise if used in a web/responsive context, most of them are.

Helvetica movie

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Gary Hustwit, released in 2007, watched by me last week.

The documentary is pleasant and includes a lot of interviews that are useful ever for who is just superficially interested in typography - like me.

The most interesting part, in my opinion, is where the different phases of typography's evolution are abstracted into specific categories - modernism, "grunge typography", neo modernism... and so on. I've never thought about it in this way but, once these terms are described by the interviews, they help us to navigate in the sea of different fonts and styles around us.

Powerhouse Company website

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Usually, I don't like sites promoted by Awwwards.
I often expect to be mesmerized by the beautiful effects and the non-ordinary interactivity and I end up finding them slow and counterintuitive.

Powerhouse company is an exception.

Awwwards "Site of the month" in April 2020, it expresses a rare balance between graphic effects and intuitiveness.

The Awwwards article says many things, I'll add here only a few points:

the effects' parameters must be well-tuned, resulting in a smooth experience, fluid and not cumbersome;
its system of navigation is unorthodox but intuitive, making the site exploration funny;
the site is built around content, instead of focusing on graphic effects.

Maybe it's not technology

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Wrong direction

I had the opportunity to work for many small and medium companies.

Most of them weren’t software house. Most of them weren’t up to date with all the technologies of javascript’s world. Typescript, Angular, and React were like echoes of distant mermaids: attractive yet too far to make the boat change direction.

I think that, startups excluded, most companies still fall under this description today. Their softwares are “old” web application written in javascript v5, jQuery and, God forbid, Bootstrap 3.