February 17, 2023 • Web

For posterity’s sake, assuming AI doesn’t completely take over the profession

SPJ.org [Dec 2021 capture, Archive.org]
SPJ.org [Jan 2021 capture, Archive.org]

The tricky thing about being a web developer is that the things you make and then pass off to others keep on living in the same place you left them. And then others take them over, change them and turn them into something that’s no longer the thing you made (even if you still can see traces and chunks of your work in what remains). This results in work that is not entirely your work anymore, and so you aren’t comfortable sharing as-is with people when they want to see what kind of work you do.

Thus, since I spent a lot of time there, here is what SPJ.org looked like on my final day in December 2021 and, below that, 11 months earlier. We did one last redesign in 2021 that I think looked pleasant but also did that thing I don’t love where an information-rich website is replaced by a large photo and large text. It’s what they wanted, I was leaving, so I gave them what they wanted (while still giving folks a path to that old information-rich style if they preferred that) and off I went.