Piccalilli

@piccalil.li

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Level up your front-end skills. Stay for the approachable, friendly content and go away with transferable skills you can use day to day. https://piccalil.li

Much like a muscle, our brain has limits to how long it can perform at an optimal level. Glucose is depleted as our brain works, and once its stores are depleted, it kinda goes to shit.
"Why did you choose a video course over a written course? You get to follow along with me. You get to see that this is a fucking messy process and that design isn’t something you just learn facts and theories about, then systematically slap the best rectangles ever together in an interface. It’s a craft, it’s a conversation, and it’s a dance between the ideas in your head and your actual ability to get them out onto a screen."
Why am I telling you all of this? I want you to learn from my mistakes. The reason I am teaching the material that I am teaching in this course is because I have experienced a lot of bad, working in this industry. The vast majority of that bad was entirely avoidable by taking just one step back, slowing the process down and making better decisions with a clearer mind.
"I’m a developer who wants to get better at design. Is this the course for me? One hundred percent yes. It’s a core audience I wanted to address with this course. This is my background, these are my people! I know that so many developer folks want to learn design, but might be discouraged by gatekeeping or the identity crisis design as a practice seems to be in the midst of right now."
By nailing communication you will by proxy, simplify and sanitise design work. This results in simpler code, which is what we should always be aiming for.
We’re going to learn how to design for real humans. Real humans are fallible, weird, unpredictable, and above all else, unique.
"What even is mindful design? Mindful design at its core is responsible and ethical design. It’s an approach to design that makes explicit the implicit responsibility we have to the people who we ask to use the stuff we make. It’s about learning how humans work, and using that knowledge to empower rather than exploit."
Keep things short. Don’t ask for too much. Presume people are busy. If a request blocks you, you’re asking too late. Absolutely never make it personal. Be descriptive and don’t presume prior knowledge.
"How did you get into design? I stumbled into it. Like a weary drunkard into the arms of a kebab shop bossman. I was a developer. I guess I continue to be one, in spirit if not in salary. But I got very bored very quickly of my work looking like — and sorry for getting too technical right at the start — absolute shit."
Break the the causal arrow of time across your knee — death to Chronos! Not only have we freed ourselves from the cruel marches of both linear time and the call stack, but they are now ours to weave into and out of at will.
We build for everyone. Not just for ourselves or our peer groups.
`then()`, `catch()`, and `finally()` can all return either a Promise or a Promise-like object called a **thenable** — an object that implements a `then()` method.
A Promise is a placeholder for a value that isn't known at the time the Promise is created — an object that represents an asynchronous operation, the terms by which the operation is considered a success or failure, the actions to be taken in either case, and the value that results.
There is no such thing as a silver bullet in CSS. It’s about finding a system — or a combination of systems — that enable you and your team to author and maintain CSS in the most effective way possible.
"What do you think people will gain from taking the course? A new found love and appreciation for Shrek 2 — the greatest film ever made."
The event loop continuously polls the status of these queues and the call stack; the former to see if there's anything waiting to be executed, and the latter to see if the stack is empty.
"Away from design, what excites you the most about the web? Personal websites Babeyyy. The web was always, to me, a place for self expression and self documentation. That’s changed a lot because startups fucking devoured the world, but there’s a little personal site revival going on lately. It’s beautiful to see."
Save 20% on all courses. Use code NEXTLEVEL at checkout
I did a lot of CSS consultancy for various sized organisations — from huge multinational corporations to smaller startups. What do you think the most common downfall in CSS codebases were across nearly all of these organisations? Framework choices? Sass? Less? CSS-in-JS? No, it’s layout and spacing.
"What do you think people will gain from taking the course? I figure you walk away from this course with a deeper understanding of JavaScript; table stakes, right? I couldn’t ask for much more than that. But if I could ask for more, what I’d really want, in my heart of hearts, is for you to be able to laugh at JavaScript a little. “Ooh, I’m made of computer science; I’m so scaaary” — man, JavaScript, you can’t even do math right. C’mon, we’re not gonna let this thing push us around. We got this."
You open Penpot and you see this — the blank canvas, the empty page — the stuff of nightmares. It can be really really difficult to know how to get started. Even for me, with all my years designing, this still makes me a little bit anxious.
"Away from JavaScript, what excites you the most about the web? The little pockets of weird are still out there. It feels like we’re starting to shake off some of the… Apple-store-ification of the past couple decades."
Fluid type and space is one of many techniques you’re going to learn in this course to make authoring CSS easier for you. The easier it is to author and maintain, the better it will scale, and most importantly, there will be less technical debt to manage too. This frees you up to focus on producing a better user experience, rather than chasing down weird CSS issues.
"If you were to give a beginner one piece of advice, what would it be? Learn to really, thoroughly and completely enjoy being shit at something. The process of learning is chaotic, nonlinear, and uniquely human. You’re getting stuck in and you’re deciding to learn a craft or technique for yourself. That is to be cherished and protected and loved."
To *reiterate* — a play on words for which I do not forgive myself, nor expect you to forgive me — an **iterator** object follows **iterator protocol**, and the elements it contains can be accessed sequentially, one at a time.
"Why did you choose a video course over a written course? You get to follow along with me. You get to see that this is a fucking messy process and that design isn’t something you just learn facts and theories about, then systematically slap the best rectangles ever together in an interface. It’s a craft, it’s a conversation, and it’s a dance between the ideas in your head and your actual ability to get them out onto a screen."
This is the thing about browsers: you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want and rightly so. There’s no stopping you from making your browser whatever size you want. There’s also nothing stopping you from installing whatever extensions you want either. Oh, let’s not forget users can literally write custom styles for websites. All in all, we have little to no control over what the user sees.
"If you were to give a beginner one piece of advice, what would it be? Learn the medium, not the tooling. Working backwards from a framework is going to feel a lot faster up-front, but it’s only going to slow you down in the grand scheme. Starting out with a fundamental understanding of JavaScript will set you up for success no matter where you go from there."
Much like a muscle, our brain has limits to how long it can perform at an optimal level. Glucose is depleted as our brain works, and once its stores are depleted, it kinda goes to shit.
Save 20% on all courses. Use code NEXTLEVEL at checkout
"Why did you opt for a written course, instead of a video course? Learning JavaScript hinges on being able to try stuff out for yourself: copy a snippet of code, chuck it into your dev console, see what happens; move a semicolon to see how it breaks. If we’re working with lexical tokens, I figure the course should be made out of them too."
Why am I telling you all of this? I want you to learn from my mistakes. The reason I am teaching the material that I am teaching in this course is because I have experienced a lot of bad, working in this industry. The vast majority of that bad was entirely avoidable by taking just one step back, slowing the process down and making better decisions with a clearer mind.
"I’m a developer who wants to get better at design. Is this the course for me? One hundred percent yes. It’s a core audience I wanted to address with this course. This is my background, these are my people! I know that so many developer folks want to learn design, but might be discouraged by gatekeeping or the identity crisis design as a practice seems to be in the midst of right now."
`3` is itself an expression — a **primary expression**. In the same way the first rule of Tautology Club is Tautology Club's first rule, the number literal `3` is an expression that resolves in a very predictable value (psst, it's three).
"What even is mindful design? Mindful design at its core is responsible and ethical design. It’s an approach to design that makes explicit the implicit responsibility we have to the people who we ask to use the stuff we make. It’s about learning how humans work, and using that knowledge to empower rather than exploit."
By nailing communication you will by proxy, simplify and sanitise design work. This results in simpler code, which is what we should always be aiming for.
"Why Piccalilli; why isn’t this just on Udemy/Skillshare/Masterclass/etc? I’m going to side with an independent publisher every single time. That’s the web I want to support. I wanted to write this in my own voice, and I wanted to play with the medium a little. JavaScript is weird; we might as well have a little fun with it, yeah?"
We’re going to learn how to design for real humans. Real humans are fallible, weird, unpredictable, and above all else, unique.
"What is it about JavaScript that has you producing so much educational material about it, for so many years? I think we do ourselves a disservice by pretending JavaScript is the web’s shameful secret, only meant to be experienced by way of anodyne frameworks that try to buff down all the rough edges. The web is supposed to be a little messy; it’s made by — and for — people."
Keep things short. Don’t ask for too much. Presume people are busy. If a request blocks you, you’re asking too late. Absolutely never make it personal. Be descriptive and don’t presume prior knowledge.
"How did you get into design? I stumbled into it. Like a weary drunkard into the arms of a kebab shop bossman. I was a developer. I guess I continue to be one, in spirit if not in salary. But I got very bored very quickly of my work looking like — and sorry for getting too technical right at the start — absolute shit."
Save 15% on All courses! Use code WINTER15 at checkout
Save the date. Black Friday Deals. Incoming November 25
A clip from the landing page that talks about how the knowledge of JavaScript that you learn in the course will set you up to be able to command more compensation and better terms because when the AI hype cycle bubble pops, your ability to fix the mess will be incredibly valuable. It's a long snippet of text but you can read the whole thing on the post's link.
JavaScript for Everyone. A new course by Mat Marquis. Launching in 7 days
The Coyier CSS starter
A clip from the Piccalilli Courses page, showing JavaScript for Everyone with a little "Launches October 14th" badge on it
A retro-futuristic graphic, titled JavaScript for Everyone. There's a pink banner-like bit of text saying "Save £100 by pre-ordering" and that's followed by "Pre-orders open August 12 for 2 weeks only!"
Promotional graphic for the Piccalilli course ‘Complete CSS.’ Bold text advertises a limited-time offer: ‘Take your CSS skills beyond the next level.’ Discounted from £249 to £169, with a ‘SAVE £80’ tag and a note that the offer ends April 21. Banner states: ‘For one week only. No code required.’
Promotional graphic for the Piccalilli course ‘Complete CSS.’ Bold text advertises a limited-time offer: ‘Take your CSS skills beyond the next level.’ Discounted from £249 to £169, with a ‘SAVE £80’ tag and a note that the offer ends April 21. Banner states: ‘For one week only. No code required.’