As the winter has turned into spring this year, I've been doing a whole lot of walking. Most days, I do a steady 4-5 mile lap around my neighborhood. It's a great way to get some fresh air, get some exercise, and get some mental space to balance out the hours I spend sitting at my desk. It's _also_ a fantastic time to listen to some podcasts and audiobooks, and I gotta tell you: one book in particular has taken hold of me. I can't stop thinking about it. It's called [_Unreasonable Hospitality_](https://amzn.to/3WaVvXl) by Will Guidara. ## Unreasonable Hospitality Guidara is a restauranteur and ..read more

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in the garage with my dad. He's a man of many projects - and hardly a weekend went past where I wasn't helping him work on _something:_ from cars, to household repairs, lawn work or tinkering with electronics. I learned a lot about tools and how to use them, and I learned that the right tool for the job can make all the difference. Two things that he used to tell me often were: 1. **Power tools are _always_ out to get you.** They may feel like they'll help you get the job done fast, but they're powerful, and they don't care about your fingers. Respect them and ..read more

OpenApi.tools is an Open Source and community-driven list of high-quality, modern tools for OpenAPI that we've been maintaining over at APIs You Won't Hate for the past few years, and it's overdue for a rebuild. ? In this session, I'll be using Astro.build to recreate the openapi.tools site, with a focus on building a highly performant, maintainable, and SEO-driven experience for the next version. If i'm lucky, we'll even get into building some fun new features to help our community find the right tools for their use case with OpenAPI I'll be building with: - Astro: https://astro.build - Hosti ..read more

## Everyone loves a generous free tier There are loads of free tools I use to get my work done, and I love recommending free tools for others to use. A quick search of articles and newsletters I've written shows 99 mentions of the word "free". I'm no stranger to the free tier, and most of all, I'm a huge fan of products that use their a free tier to prove their value, and then convert me to a paying customer. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the products I pay for. Like most developers, I'm pretty sensitive to price: I'm willing to pay a reasonable fee for services based on t ..read more

## SEO is the growth engine for your work If you're building a brand, a business, or a personal website, taking the time to invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will help your work get discovered when people search for related topics on DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Google. In my experience, developers often overlook SEO for one reason or another. But it's a critical part of building a successful website. Side note: SEO is a _massive_ topic - I'm far from an expert, but I've found it invaluable to learn a few basics. If I've got anything wrong here, or you know more than me, [I'd love to hear fr ..read more

## Thanks, I hate it In the first days of building [Craftwork](https://craftwork.com), I made the decision to use Tailwind CSS for our projects. This choice was driven by tailwind's adaptability, and its popularity among developers. Here's the thing though: Tailwind and I don't really get along. I've spent years learning to create design systems with traditional CSS. More recently I found myself building products using full-blown UI libraries like Material UI and Chakra, because they make it _super_ fast_ to build a rich, functional, and accessible UI. By contrast, Tailwind is somewhere in the ..read more

Have you ever felt that you've seen a design that just makes sense to you, but you couldn't quite put your finger on why? --- At some point, we are all faced with the challenge of creating a design that works intuitively _and_ looks great. When building a new interface, there's a temptation to lean heavily on obvious design elements like color or shape, or to use cards and borders to hold bits of UI. It makes sense: these are easily visible to person using your app. What you may not realize is why these elements are so effective. The people who use our designs are silently and subconsciously n ..read more

## Notes about today's Livecoding stream This is a YouTube Livestream, where I'll be working on integrating Resend Broadcasts into my next.js site to use for sending newsletters. Resend released a new set of features this week that makes it easier to send mail to large audiences. I'll be building with: - Resend - Next.js - TypeScript - Vercel - Tailwind CSS With Substack recently catching headlines for their boneheaded content moderation policies, lots of creators and developers have been looking at other tools for managing their mailing lists. Between Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, an ..read more

There have been _lots_ of interesting announcements from creators and startups this month. Many apps and services that once felt like they were here to stay are now shutting down. Similarly, many creators are announcing big changes to their strategy, or even stepping down from their roles entirely. Seems like it's all happening at once, right? Well, in a sense -- it is. And there are a few reasons why that might be the case: - For **creators**, December and January are the slowest months of the year. Advertisers' budgets are spent, and people are spending time with their families. As a result ..read more

_Editor's note: Happy New Year, gang! Tiny Improvements took off for a few weeks at the end of the year so I could [fix my leg, lol](https://www.threads.net/@irreverentmike/post/C1GCgSVsZ5t), but we're back in action and will be coming to your inbox mostly-weekly for the foreseeable future. I hope you're well._ **Fitts' Law** is simple: the time required to move to a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. The further away and smaller the target, the longer it takes to reach it. The closer and larger the target, the faster it is to reach it. ([Wikipedia ..read more