Hanging a Picture without Building the House
What It Takes
I make tools to make it easier to make websites. Talking to my therapist about them is always interesting. She's not a techie. Has never opened a code editor. When I get excited about my work, describing why I'm excited requires finding common ground.
The analogy from today's session:
Wanting to make something on the web is like wanting to hang a picture. You shouldn't have to build a house in order to have a wall to hang it on.
Construction Costs
It feels like we've lost site of that.
Starting an introduction to web dev with "First, go to the command line..." kicks entire categories of people out of the process. It puts unnecessary distance between the point where you start typing stuff and the point when you start seeing stuff on a page.
I'm finishing up a tool to help. It gives you the house. No need to learn about foundations, framing, or HVAC units. You just start putting things where you want them.
I'm proud of the work. If I did it right, it'll provide a shorter, smoother on-ramp to making stuff for the web. I can't think of a better gift I can give the world.
-a
Endnotes
No, this is not the site builder project I've been working on. That's Neopoligen. This one is JavaScript stuff.
My goal is not to be obtuse about the name of the project or linking to it. There's already a site. It's prototype/beta code and documentation. I just don't want it to be folks' first experience until I've polished it.
I'll post a notice on this site and its RSS feed along with notes on bluesky and mastodon when things are ready. Unless something goes sideways, it'll be the second week of Sept. 2025.
I generally don't like talking about stuff I'm going to do. I prefer talking about stuff I've done. I'm going against that inclination here.
Partially, it's to pique interest. Mainly, it's because I like the picture hanging analogy and wanted to write it up before I forgot it.