Reading List

Jake Archibald explains CORS from first principles—origins vs sites, why credentials complicate cross-origin requests, and how the CORS header model evolved. He shows when CORS applies, how to use Access-Control-Allow-Origin, credentials with Access-Control-Allow-Credentials, the importance of Vary for caches/CDNs, and how preflights work for unusual methods/headers. Includes a hands-on playground and gotchas (e.g., method casing in Chrome, header exposure, caching pitfalls).

NN/g explains mental models in UX: users form beliefs about how systems work based on prior experiences, which guide their predictions and actions. Common patterns (ecommerce carts, the Back button, single-site search) illustrate how mismatches cause usability issues. Because mental-model inertia is strong, designers should favor established conventions and only innovate when clearly better, while teaching new concepts succinctly through onboarding, help, and testing. Think-aloud user testing helps reveal users’ mental models so teams can fix IA, labels, and flows.

Karl Koch argues for designing with strong affordances—the perceivable properties that suggest how something should be used. Using a banana-peeling analogy, he critiques trends like “Liquid Glass” UI that hide controls and erase tactile cues. The result is subtle, constant friction that prevents deep work and forces users to guess. He advocates building tools—especially AI systems—with intuitive, visible signposts that align with real-world interaction, so technology becomes a natural extension of human capability.

Terry Godier’s visual essay (text version) argues that many interfaces import the moral weight of obligation by copying email’s unread metaphors into contexts where no one awaits a response. Tracing a lineage from physical inboxes to email to RSS and beyond, he calls this mismatch “phantom obligation.” Unread counts, badges, and queues manufacture anxiety and taskification. Godier suggests alternative metaphors—streams, circles, windows, shelves—that emphasize optionality over debt, and poses the central check: is anyone actually waiting?

Sean Goedecke argues that meaningful software design for large, established systems can only be done by engineers who work on them. Concrete details—module boundaries, data availability, coupling, and historical constraints—outweigh generic patterns and principles. Useful design discussions are small, detail-heavy, and often boring to outsiders. Generic design still has roles: greenfield projects, tie-breaking among acceptable concrete options, and company-wide consistency or platform choices. He critiques detached architect roles with no delivery accountability and proposes that those who design should also own outcomes.

This article examines how the software industry has repeatedly failed to learn that software development is fundamentally about managing information flow and learning, not construction.

A deep dive into Turso, a new database engine compatible with SQLite's file format but rewritten in Rust. The article explores why Turso is needed, how it addresses SQLite's pain points (concurrent writes, MVCC, async I/O), and why a database that scales from in-process to networked is the future for modern development.

This article from Kagi discusses Google's search monopoly, recent antitrust rulings, and their implications for the future of search and AI.

Web policy and governance expert Mark Nottingham reflects on the concept of "The Open Web," particularly focusing on open access to information and how AI is disrupting the traditional incentive structures that have kept content freely available online.