Snook Dreams of the Web
A number of year ago, I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Here is a man that has devoted his life to creating the best sushi in the world. I admire someone so dedicated to the task. Jiro sought out the best fish and the best rice and refined his process. New employees spend years working on just a single aspect of the sushi-making process.
Maybe with some clichéd inevitability—and not unlike so many other people that have watched the documentary—I’ve thought about how this relates to my own craft of web development.
What does mastery look like?
What does it mean to master the craft of web development? Can something that changes so frequently ever be mastered? Can mastery be attained when we’re changing jobs every one, two, three years? Can mastery be attained when we’re rewriting codebases every few years?
Perhaps mastery is when the result serves its audience in the best possible way.
Of course, that goes down a rabbit hole of whom the audience is and what best means. Does McDonald’s serve its audience in the best possible way? Would anybody say they’ve mastered the art of food or service?
The imagery of a master of craft is that of a lone creator, toiling away for years, perfecting every facet of their creative output.
As a web developer, I imagine having an intimate knowledge of each of the layers of development: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. To understand each one also means understanding how much or how little of each one is required.
Where sushi—more specifically, nigiri—has its rice and fish, there’s also the rice seasoning, the soy sauce, and the wasabi. Perhaps a yuzu kosho to enhance the bite? Or aburi-style?
It’s one thing to build something with HTML. It’s another to know how to effectively add CSS and JavaScript without overdoing it. A master should also understand the user experience. How do we interact with the page?
Achieving Mastery
Any part of development that improves the end result leads to mastery. The end result is what people “consume”. It is the product. It is the experience.
Using a framework or switching frameworks or using a bunch of tooling doesn’t in and of itself lead to either of these. They might help you build more quickly but that doesn’t mean mastery if what you’ve built frustrates the people that use the product.
Therefore, when it comes to web development, mastery comes from understanding how people use your product and the different contexts in which they do, whether that’s desktop, tablet, mobile, finger, keyboard, mouse, screen reader, day, night, over fast or slow speeds. Are they a first time visitor or do they frequent your site?
If we were to follow Jiro’s and his apprentices’ journeys and imagine web development the same way then would we ask of our junior developers to spend the first year of their career only on HTML. No CSS. No JavaScript. No frameworks. Only HTML. Only once HTML has been mastered do we move onto CSS. And only once that has been mastered do we move onto JavaScript.
And yet, going back to the point of how quickly our industry changes, spending a year on CSS would require another year to master the new stuff that came out requiring another year to master the new stuff that came out and so on. Not very practical when, at the end of the day, we need to build things that people use and we need to get paid. Bills don’t just pay themselves.
Personal Craft
Perhaps, as Hamid says, “iterating, tending, evolving, and continuously improving—results in a collection of work that embodies their creators’ intentions and aspirations for care.”
Running a personal site can be a way to practice mastery. It allows me to focus on individual facets, improving my knowledge and skill to achieve mastery. With an ever-changing technology landscape, there is plenty of opportunity to continue that journey and build on top of the skills that we have, creating new techniques.
I think of the web that we had in the naughts when our curiosity and explorations seemed to create an explosion of new techniques and approaches shared to the world at large.
I would enjoy seeing a return to more people curating their own garden, mastering their craft, and sharing it outside of the capitalist hellscape that is modern social media.
I originally wrote most of this post back in 2020, including the Jiro reference. I was reminded of this draft while reading Hamid’s thoughts on craft.
I am also reminded of John Allsopp’s Dao of Web Design that is a week away from a quarter century old.
I also read Greg Storey’s post on nostalgia and careers and my takeaway was perhaps a return to new creative explorations can lead us into new possibilities.