Hi Adam. I am Jochen and I would love to work on Tailwind with you.
I am a trained designer and self-taught developer living in Bochum, Germany. I quit my first (and thus far only) job as art director / front-end dev early on and went freelance to free up enough time to dive into something else entirely.
I found a partner, rented a space. We built a pretty cool music studio and gathered a bunch of good people to work it with. We have been recording a ton of music and producing live videos sessions for the past couple of years.
It's been a blast. And it's been rough. While I love making music, there are a lot of things I about working in music that I have come to really, really fucking hate.
It's time for a change.
About me
I spent a lot of time thinking about HTML/CSS architecture, accessibility and performance on medium to large web projects. I might skip Figma and go straight to markup. I am good at focusing on details, when it's time to. Usability wins over flash every time.
I have been coding for 15 years and know my way around JS, Rails and Laravel but am not an expert in any of them. I am constantly curious and get easily excited about tech that actually works and feels elegant (turns out that doesn't happen too often).
A few things I feel strongly about
- It's absolutely bonkers how often misappropriated JAMstacks ruin the user experience.
- As of now, Rails/Laravel + some Alpine/Stimulus is probably the best way to build 99% of the web. I doubt that's gonna change soon.
- Anything flickering or flashing on page load is really not okay – but it's also way too hard to avoid. Web should and will feel native (eventually).
- Hot reloading is actually fucking with designers that develop. Making it harder to visually compare changes is an anti-pattern.
About Tailwind
I have been using Tailwind for about 2 years now for most of my CSS needs, which puts it at a close second to inuitcss on my personal web-tech-longevity chart. Nice.
Since Tailwind is stable there is some limit as to what can be changed (What would you change first if it wasn't?) and there is also the question of what prolems it should solve (Space Between surprised me). Anyway…
Things to take a closer look at
- Responsive font sizes, paddings and margins to cut down on
px-4 md:px-8 lg:px-12patterns where possible. Both responsive and fluid seem like viable approaches. - Going design agnostic. Tailwinds distinctly modern and polished presentation is huge part of its success but seperating the utility from design trends will be an inevitable step towards longevity
- Consistency Is it Tailwind CSS? tailwindcss? Just Tailwind? Are you hiring for Tailwind UI or Tailwind CSS? Not the biggest deal but feels messy. Let's clean it up.
About you
You know code, to a point where it's almost intimmidating. You know how to write concisely which I value immensely.
You do shit. I like people who do shit.
Mostly though, I am at a point in my life where I value time well spent over pretty much anything else. Tailwind is value. You seem genuine, direct and like an awfully pleasent guy to work and spend time with every day.
Yeah. Seems worth giving it a shot.
Phew, we made it. Thanks for your time and consideration, Adam :)
jochen@stummbillig.com ←