Salma Alam-Naylor articles - 103 total
The promise that wasn’t kept
I recently wrote about AI and productivity, and how data from the 2024 Accelerate State of DevOps...
It wasn’t the idea that failed: it was the execution
Since writing my new talk, An Introduction to the World Wide Web for Very Senior Programmers, in...
Does AI really make you more productive?
In October 2024, the DORA research programme published the 2024 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,...
Is this the next step in the evolution of front end dev?
In 2025, setting up new web development projects is still really, really annoying. And honestly, it’s...
You are more than the tools you use: tell your story
How many times have you seen someone introduce themselves via the tools they use? Maybe this looks...
3 reasons you should tour a conference talk
In 2023-2024, I gave my conference talk Entertainment as Code six times. It should have been eight...
How I created a newsletter I actually enjoy writing
Lots of developers send newsletters, and as I thrust myself into the online technology space in 2020,...
How I learned to code with my voice
In January 2025, I developed excruciating pain and pins and needles in my hands, which made it very...
How to build a copy code snippet button and why it matters
If you’ve been watching my streams in 2025, you’ll know that I’m currently suffering from carpel...
Your live coding stream does not need a bigger audience
There's a growing and gamified pressure from live streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube to...
How I reduced an API call from >5 seconds to under 100ms
Given that 100% of the databases I have interacted with in my professional career have been SQL...
How I show Bluesky likes on my blog posts
I’m really enjoying spending time on Bluesky right now. One of the things I really enjoy about the...
Sentry can’t fix React hydration errors, but it can really help you debug them
Hydration failed because the initial ui does not match what was rendered on the server. Don’t you...
Work is meaningless, and it almost killed my husband
My husband’s name is Richard. He is the love of my life. At the time of writing we have been married...
How to make your web page faster before it even loads
As developers (and as front end developers in particular), we usually talk about web performance in...
I conducted a community survey and here’s what I learned
Last month I had a crisis of confidence. And so I do what everyone does when they doubt themselves. I...
Your bad LCP score might be a backend issue
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a Core Web Vital (CWV) metric that marks the point in the page load...
The best way to debug slow web pages
Tools like Page Speed Insights and Google Lighthouse are great for providing advice for front end...
How to hack your Google Lighthouse scores in 2024
Google Lighthouse has been one of the most effective ways to gamify and promote web page performance...
One does not simply delete cookies
Naming is hard. Modern developer tools often provide intuitive APIs acting as wrappers around web...
5 easy tips to improve your personal website performance
If you’re a developer, you need a personal website. While billionaire-owned, algorithm-based social...
How to prevent Prettier putting a full stop on a new line after a link
Do you use Prettier? Have your configuration settings caused weird HTML rendering issues by adding...
Why don’t we talk about minifying CSS anymore?
Minifying your CSS helps improve your website performance. But as developers, we don’t really talk...
Your background images might be causing CLS
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is where the layout of a web page unexpectedly shifts after the initial...
How I fixed my BRUTAL TTFB
Recently, I improved all my homepage Core Web Vitals by focusing on improving just one metric: the...
What is INP and why you should care
On March 12th 2024, Google is launching a new Core Web Vital metric, Interaction to Next Paint (INP)....
My blog post workflow
Cliché opener incoming. A lot of people have asked me about my writing workflow. So here it is,...
The future of Jamstack is anti-capitalist
This week I took part in a live panel discussion about what’s next for Jamstack. Hosted by Mike...
Ramblings about JavaScript scope, weird errors and frameworks
My website had a silly bug in production for a year. It was quite inconsequential (I think), and I...
How to deal with API rate limits
When I first had the idea for this post, I wanted to provide a collection of actionable ways to...