This is a great read from Eric Bailey, reminding us that the technology decisions we make truly can make the difference between people getting the healthcare they need or not. In some cases, it can even be a matter of life or death.
A person seeking help in a time of crisis does not care about TypeScript, tree shaking, hot module replacement, A/B tests, burndown charts, NPS, OKRs, KPIs, or other startup jargon. Developer experience does not count for shit if the person using the thing they built can’t actually get what they need.
Resilience. Sturdiness. Speed. Progressive enhancement. User experience. These are all important, long-standing principles for making great web experiences, and they certainly should be front-of-mind for folks creating critical content/services for people.
This has me thinking: I’m heartened to see the pendulum swing back towards server-side rendering, but I think it’s going to take the next decade to weed out a lot of white-screen-with-spinner experiences.