It's that time of the year where I do the European thing, taking way too much holiday during summer. Yep, we're talking more than a week, this year even more than three, and to be honest, I kind of need it. How was my first half of the year? There is a lot to be said from a shift in my day job, to CSS, to web standards, to disturbances in balance and frustrations on a golf course.
A year ago, I would’ve never thought I’d be spending more time creating AI workflows and let agents do my coding instead of coding myself. How did that happen?! A year ago, we had these “rockstar AI dudes” telling me “Hey, look what I can code in just a single prompt”, mostly me thinking “yeah… but your code kinda sucks!”. And I stand by that, even today. Usually (and I don’t mean all of you, but there was a trend…) it was the developers who just weren’t that good to begin with… These rockstar-dudes (and dudettes) still exist, they were always there. The difference now though, is that somewhere at the end of 2025, the tooling around AI was starting to get pretty damn good. More ways to orchestrate agents and to create boundaries. Good output shifting from a 50% acceptance rate to 80%+.
So yeah, I jumped on that wagon as it was finally showing some value, and today, I barely write any code during the day, I orchestrate it, review it and hope to maintain a good standard doing it.
CSS as my edge, strength in UI, a specialty that could work and why our design systems still suck
I’m not going to repeat Adam Argyle’s talk from CSS day in an article, but it’s gotten stuck in my head so many times. It was there before, but the confirmation from that talk was a kicker. Our design systems are still bad… And now we have this tool, this amazing power tool to type super fast, to create quick layouts using our boundaries created by rule- and skillsets, able to use fine-tuned CSS almost automatically so that we could have time to go in the CSS toolbox and leverage our design system to an amazing piece of work where UI adapts, shifts, looks like it came straight from After Effects, BUT NO! Welcome to economic reality, we’re going to make one light mode website and it’s going to look like we built it in 2015 using Bootstrap but now we ship faster, because that is what the world has been waiting for, some more mediocre websites, with sketchy accessibility, semi-performant, boring,… But hey! Fast delivered, good ROI! If you’re a dev thinking “yeah, but in the end people just want that basic stuff”, well let me give you some perspective, if that’s all you can create, yes, the future is quite dark for you. I see many amazing capable people on the job market having a rough time who are absolute bonkers in the front-end / design world, being it in JS or CSS. But also if you are managing a company that only thinks about faster, tread carefully.
But there must be a benefit, right?
I believe that we’re going to have a few more lows before the highs start to kick in again. I am talking layoffs, junior gaps, really dark things, it would be naive to ignore this. But I’m not a doom thinker for the long-term. In these sort of technological transitions, the world needs to break a bit before it can heal. I agree that the speed of this change is bigger than what we ever had, but the same can be said of each major change before.
AI fatigue?
Personally, I’ve been there. I’m actually past the point of fatigue now and came to terms that this is just going to be my job now. It’s also good to know that I can still go back to “handcoding” if I had to. The development part was always just a means to an end for me, I wanted to create beautiful quality interfaces and fix the puzzle on how to create it in the best possible way, which is why I love CSS so much.
But this is where I get my current fears… What if people just don’t care about interfaces? What if we don’t get AI as it was promised in many Sci-fi movies with hand gestures, floating images, connections, popovers, swipe thingies, and all that good stuff? What if people just become… lazy, and boring? I don’t believe this will be the case and have already written about this before, still, I thought to mention it again, let’s skip ahead…
Overloaded in CSS?
I love writing about new CSS features, I love playing with them, experimenting the hell out of it. But for those demos and the blog I do have some hard rules:
- CSS demos should be 90% hand written, only use AI for things such as dummy texts. I want to learn the feature, not just fake blog about it.
- Articles handwritten, always, use spelling / grammar tools only (and I have a lot of proof on that, people pointing out typos and mistakes when I launch something 😅)
- At least one article each month
- Oh yeah.. and avoid - dashes - I used to do those a lot before they became an AI-thing.
But the problem is that I’m also tinkering on workflows, improving my skillset, trying to get those multi-handle range sliders off the ground. Trying to find my personal benefit in an AI world as a consumer. Preparing talks, giving talks,… it’s a lot to do in those few hours after work while still trying to be a good parent, husband, and friend. I manage, tech and UI is a passion, but this is why, I need this long break.
There are so many cool CSS features that I want to write about, it’s been an overload and I love it for the language, for beautiful user interfaces, but I just haven’t found the time to demo them properly, it’s weighing on me, and instead of pushing, I should just let it go for now.
AI did give us more work…
Writing… why?
The chances you’ve read this far are pretty slim, I get it, you’re still an awesome person. About that… You know I like being honest so here it goes. Dopamine hits get addictive. I remember being super hyped a few years back that 20 people read an article! 20! That’s a classroom! A while ago I had an article where I noticed it “only has about 250 reads” Why is this in my mind… come on… BOEHOE! I’m better than that, surely?
But then it hit me, maybe it’s not about the decrease of reads, maybe my content has gotten worse, rushed. Maybe my limited knowledge of English doesn’t have a place in a world where AI writes perfectly fine articles in elegant grammar. Maybe it was just wan’t a hot topic. Could be anything, and it shouldn’t matter. The fact that this was on my mind, that was bad. I don’t want to turn into one of those people…
That means I need to get back on track, stick to the goal, be better, not bigger.
Frustrations on the golf course
Oh, this was going to be my year! Yep, I suck at Golf, but I find hitting that little ball with a stick highly addictive and this year, I was going to get better. Winter driving range sessions looked promising, then the trainings on course went good, I was getting greens in regulation a few times, penalty free rounds, and this was when the ground was wet, so summer was going to be great! Then I did a few competitions and played like I’ve never hit a ball in my life. I’m still at that point… when doing competitions, things get real, there is a goal, and for those who know golf, I’m only at a HC40.8, so yeah I do need to get at least a little bit better.
But you get it right?
It’s not about burning out, AI fatigue, it’s not just about frustrations and anxiety either, it’s a need for a little reset. It’s been 6 months since my last holiday. A bit of a pause, clear my head, draw a little, go play golf for fun. And nothing beats spending time with family and friends. First a few chill days and then I can just wake up in the morning, have a coffee, read a bit (fiction). Then do some arts and crafts with my daughter, do a swim in the afternoon or visit the zoo, have a BBQ in the evening, play a board game…
So what after your long break
Well, back on it. With a clear mind. I have some really cool conferences where I’ll be speaking that I’m looking forward to. I can confirm that I’ll be speaking at NDC Oslo and Frontmania. I’ll also be attending Fronteers dark mode and there are still a few in the pipeline.
Maybe at the end of August, I’ll try to create some cool CSS demos. In September, my blog will be 5 years old, should do something for that at least…
AI might become a category on this blog. However, if I’m doing this it has to be about value, related to UI/UX and it needs to help people. No rockstar-nonsense. But that’s a story for another time.
For those that did read this till the end or the largest part of it… you’re amazing (or crazy?). Hope I didn’t bore you. Hope you got something out of this, I still find it hard to write personal stories and thoughts that go beyond fun UI stuff. It was my goal to do this more during the year.
I hope all of you get some time this summer to do a reset, whether it’s just for a week, or a few weeks in a row. Enjoy your summer, see you in August ❤️.
