👨‍🚀 50 Years of Tech Wisdom

and why you should learn HTML

Author

Journals GG
January 27, 2025

Hey there.

Here’s everything you need to know this week in the world of full-stack development.

Frontend Focus

🧑‍🎓 Learning HTML is the best investment I ever did
Learning HTML is a smart move, it’s simple, clear, and incredibly useful. Even Wired recently highlighted how HTML is foundational, especially for organizing and indexing content or even RAG training. Christian Heilmann’s blog post argues that with its straightforward syntax and only a few rules to follow, HTML makes creating accessible, structured interfaces easy. Yet, so many people skip over it entirely. Don’t be that person.

🎨 Tailwind CSS v4.0 is finally here
Tailwind CSS v4.0 is finally here! It introduces a high-performance engine with builds up to 5x faster, a modernized P3 colour palette, and new 3D transform utilities. It also features expanded gradient APIs, built-in import support, container queries, and a simplified CSS-first configuration. With automatic content detection, @starting-style transitions, and the not-* variant.

🔄 How Redirects Impact Page Speed
Conor McCarthy’s blog dives into how website redirects impact performance, highlighting how extra steps can slow page loads and hurt user experience. These delays also affect Core Web Vitals, making optimization essential. Streamlining redirects leads to faster, smoother browsing for your visitors.

Programming

📖 Life Lessons from a 50 year career
David A. Patterson, after an incredible 50 years in systems research at UC Berkeley and contributing to Google’s AI hardware advancements, shares 16 powerful life lessons from his career. His insights reflect decades of innovation, collaboration, and groundbreaking achievements in tech.

🤖 Two Programming-with-AI Approaches
Eleanor has been experimenting extensively with AI in programming, achieving significant success as it becomes a constant in her workflow. Two emerging patterns dominate: dialog programming with AI assistants, where collaboration thrives, and commanding an AI programmer, a more directive approach. So what are the considerations for either approach?

🧠 7 Lessons from building a small-scale AI application
This great blog post explores the transformative impact of ChatGPT on software, detailing a year spent building an AI personal assistant for a “past-CEO-self.” It answers questions, provides status updates, and summarizes activity.

Tools

AI