DEV Community: Paul Strickland

Good Enough

Paul Strickland — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 08:00:05 +0000

In my technical work and on my more opinionated days, I'd often think to myself (and sometimes say to people) that "good enough" is not good enough. This opinion was only ever intended as a response to poor quality work; and to the idea that you shouldn't strive for perfection in your professional life. I still believe this, but need to acknowledge the downside to this view.

Aiming for perfection in your craft

I think for a living, and sometimes I have to write those thoughts down. That writing should be as good as it can be.

I like to compare it to a craft such as carpentry: if you were making a cabinet, you would strive for it to be perfect – it represents your skill and is responsible for your livelihood.

Writing is no different for me. It is what supports the reputation that people associate with me. Therefore, I hold myself to a high standard.

Expecting too much from a weekend

Each and every weekend so far in 2021 has followed an exhausting routine. I get so excited at the opportunity offered by two whole days of time alone with no commitments. (With lockdowns still in place, going outside at the weekend for me is only for exercise.)

I am poor at estimating the effort required for different activities, especially those hobbies that require learning. This means I overestimate what I can achieve in a weekend. By the end of it, I can be both exhausted and disappointed.

Weekends are supposed to be my opportunity for rest and recreation. I don't want to wake up on a Monday morning feeling exhausted, but also that I've "wasted" a weekend.

Accept imperfection in life

My weekends are precious. They offer me a chance to relax, to focus on a hobby, to read or learn. But it is futile to expect to be able to achieve each and every one of those things every weekend. I need to give myself a break, and accept that a lazy weekend of doing a few bits and pieces or a whole lot of nothing can be good enough.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

January – a difficult month

Paul Strickland — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 14:17:18 +0000

As the month comes to a close, I've been thinking back on this first month of the year. I can't say it's been a good month, but it hasn't been particularly bad either. I think the best way I can describe it is that it never got going properly.

By the end of 2020 there was quite a lot of optimism about what the new year would bring, but I was keen to keep a more level (and pessimistic) head.

Unconventional start

2021 didn't exactly start the way I expected. As usual, I stayed with my family over Christmas. I usually come back home around about the new year. I was already planning to travel later than that, mainly to avoid a busy journey as everyone returned home and to work. What I did not expect by that point was for the country to have yet another lockdown imposed upon it. All this led to me staying an extra week with my parents. Although I was nominally working from there, the change from being on holiday to being at work was not as pronounced as it would have been if I had gone back home. This made it difficult to adjust when I did eventually make it home later in the month.

The actual reality of the third lockdown still has had little obvious impact on my daily life. Since March 2020 I've tended to stay at home, run daily and shop weekly. And this routine continued regardless of whether I was living in a lockdown, in a strange "return to work or be sacked/go out and eat" relaxation, or in some variant of tiered restrictions. Still, there is a definite sense of fatigue with the pandemic occupying aspects of every waking moment, and coupled with the general of gloominess of January anyway, this led to a very low level of motivation.

Also emerging from (or even precipitated by) lockdown was an unexpected development in my personal life. Unfortunately this happened during lockdown, and so I found myself in a most peculiar limbo as I returned home.

Slow start

After a protracted 3-week stay away from home, returning back to my normal life was very difficult. It's not that I minded it so much, but trying to adjust was hard work. Suddenly I had to do things like think about what to eat, fit running back into my day and other mundane things like laundry.

Topping all this off, work has been quiet, so there wasn't a lot of useful distraction there. It's not uncommon for our work to move through cycles of quiet, but the culmination of a quiet period with this strange January was certainly not helpful.

On the other hand

It can feel as if everything is bad, but there is usually another side to consider, and this situation is no different.

I didn't run over Christmas, but as soon as I was home I started again. It was quite hard work as expected, but also felt completely natural to be running again each morning. And although I had lost a bit of fitness, this came back quickly and I feel like I benefited from the rest overall.

Also part of my return to running has been a return to trail running. At some point last year I switched to road running and that was a fine routine, but my long runs in January have been off-road and I've really enjoyed the change. Whereas running on the road allows you to zone out and enjoy the repetitive plodding nature of running, trail running demands your attention with every step.

Finally, with the return to running and fitness, I've also restarted some strength work. This is definitely necessary as I can already feel some weakness in one side of my body, and the risk of injury is not something I want to ignore.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Year in review – podcasts

Paul Strickland — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 22:05:43 +0000

Podcasts have been a big part of my life in the past year. I always listen to them when running, but also over the weekend when I'm doing housework. I've compiled a list of my favourites from the year.

50 Things that Made the Modern Economy
The Allusionist
The Changelog collection of podcasts
Command Line Heroes
Developer Tea
Field Recordings
Frontend Happy Hour
In Our Time
It's the Pictures That Got Small
KEXP Weekly Mix
Lingthusiasm
The Lonely Palette
More or Less
Omega Tau
What Trump can teach us about Con Law
99% Invisible

50 Things that Made the Modern Economy

From the BBC World Service, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy builds on the format first popularised by A History of the World in 100 Objects. Each episode is a short discussion about various inventions or discoveries and their impact on the modern economy. Example episodes include the disposable razor, concrete and prohibition.

The Allusionist

Becoming newly independent in 2020, The Allusionist is the first language-related podcast on this list. I find it hard to describe any more than saying that it is full of interesting and curious aspects of language, how it is used and how it evolves. Like a few podcasts on this list, there are episodes that I play for the sake of something to be playing in the background, only to find myself restarting it so that I can properly absorb the detail.

The Changelog collection of podcasts

The Changelog produces a selection of podcasts, all about the world of software:

Brain Science
The Changelog
Go Time
JS Party
Practical AI

Brain Science is a little different in that it discusses more general work-related philosophy and psychology. It's very good if you're interested in things such as balancing your life and work.

Command Line Heroes

Now in its sixth season, Command Line Heroes covers computer history with one theme per season. The most recent one covers some crucial inventions by unsung people of colour, such as the IBM 5150 and the mathematical modelling of the earth that underpins GPS.

Developer Tea

Another hard-to-categorise podcast, I think all I can really say is that it offers an interesting take on the more philosophical aspects of work. For example, a recent episode of Developer Tea made me re-evaluate my typical dismissal of New Year by suggesting that we do react to such changes and that they can be used to create a sense of renewal. Another episode looked at CVs from a different perspective -- more an exercise in data reduction than of trying to sell your skills in the traditional sense.

Field Recordings

Field Recordings is exactly what is described. A variety of field recordings made by different people in different situations. I first became aware of this in April 2020 when everything suddenly seemed louder outside without the traffic hum. This podcast makes you open your ears more as you go about your day -- you'll be amazed at how much there is to listen to.

Frontend Happy Hour

Another "background noise" podcast for me in most cases, but still full of interesting conversation. As expected, this podcast revolves around frontend development but covers a much broader range of topics, including things such as imposter syndrome, inclusive language and working from home.

In Our Time

From the BBC, In Our Time is presented by Melvyn Bragg, who invites a panel of three experts to discuss a large variety of topics. These topics and the discussions are best described as serious: each episode comes with a reading list. I do not attempt to absorb the majority of the content, but what I do manage to follow is very interesting, and it is a refreshing change to hear serious discussion by experts in fields other than my own.

It's the Pictures That Got Small

This short series appeared during that peculiar time between April and June when it felt like the entire world's population was stuck at home. In each episode the group discuss a classic film that they haven't seen. You can watch the film and listen along, but I found that the more interesting films were those that came up in conversation. This podcast introduced me to Fury (the 1936 thriller, not the 2014 tank film), The Spiral Staircase and Gaslight. I also tried to watch Dune, but the less said about that the better...

KEXP Weekly Mix

A weekly mix of music from the Seattle radio station. It's nice to hear a bit of a different perspective from my usual goto of BBC Radio 6 Music.

Lingthusiasm

Another podcast about language, or perhaps more accurately the science of linguistics. One of the most fascinating parts of this subject is how children learn language without being able to speak, and another is the study of how language constantly evolves -- this made me think twice about my entrenched positions regarding some aspects of grammar that seem to be changing in common use.

The Lonely Palette

A podcast about art. Not as bizarre as it might sound, but this is one that I have to pay attention to. The host takes a work of modern art and uses it as the basis for what is best described as an essay on the art, the artist and the period of time that it was produced. It's easy to miss some details if you're not careful, so repeated listening is sometimes necessary.

More or Less extended series

More or Less is a BBC Radio 4 programme about statistics in the news. During the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK, I started listening with interest, not least because the government was making a pig's ear of recording and reporting statistics about the pandemic, as well as just about everything else. That particular series had so much information to report that it was extended into the summer. It was a rare source of sensible application of science for me and provided a mixture of reassurance and dark humour as each mistake or omission was calmly unpicked by experts.

Omega Tau

One of the few podcasts I know of that discusses non-software-based engineering. Omega Tau episodes are interviews with a variety of people who talk about all things science and engineering. One of my favourite episodes was about the history and development of nuclear weapons, but I'm also trying to understand particle physics through a series of episodes that revolve around the work of the Large Hadron Collider. It needs careful listening, but it's worth it.

What Trump can teach us about Con Law

I stumbled across this series quite recently, but listened to all episodes while being quite baffled at the situation the world has found itself in. Being from the UK, US constitutional law is not something I have much need to know about, but it is still quite fascinating, especially during the apparently endless election process that is happening.

99% Invisible

If I could pick only one podcast, it would be 99% Invisible. I actually don't listen to episodes as quickly as they are released -- I'm still a few behind after spending months working through the archive. Only some episodes are memorable to me, and some do not interest me a huge amount. It doesn't make a lot of sense why this is my favourite, but I have no doubt that it is, and also the one I am most likely to recommend to other people, especially anyone with a passing interest in industrial design or the built world. It's fantastic.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Year in review – work

Paul Strickland — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 16:48:16 +0000

There are many things to say about this year. In terms of my job and work, however, there are two main themes I can reflect on:

We made a substantial change to how we worked
The work kept going in much the same way as ever

Changing how we work

We started the year working in the office for the majority of the time, and I would also travel to customer meetings a couple of times a month. By the end of March we found ourselves working from home. Although there were a few teething problems for us, it seems like we adapted remarkably well. Because our business had been predominantly office-based, we had no widely available video chat tools available for the majority of the year, so all of our communication was by phone and email. Some of our more network intensive applications were slow to access through a VPN, but the company adapted the network infrastructure to suit the change and we have had a perfectly usable setup throughout the year. Slow at times, yes, but not often a problem.

Later in the year we had a video chat tool accredited for our use and, to many of us, this was a significant improvement. Although the phone-based communication we had been using was adequate for our needs, adding video made me appreciate the face-to-face element of communication so much more. I would actually feel positive after a video call, just from seeing other people.

The same as it ever was

Despite the changes to how we worked, we spent the year doing the same work and delivered the same amount as we usually do. This had been a concern at first, but I think everyone was surprised at how well we adapted as a company and delivered as well as before.

Delivering in the same way as before was good for the business, but was not without frustration for me at times. When faced with some of the more challenging problems for our customers, I like to explore different, and sometimes novel, ways to provide a useful solution. Unfortunately, there are some people in our team who would rather turn away such work because it's too difficult, or even just too different to normal.

The future

I do not expect there to be any changes to the way we work when I return next year. But continuing in the way we have been doing for the past 9 months is not as daunting for me as I originally thought it might have been. As far as any changes I would like to make, I have not yet decided. Ordinarily I do not commit to resolutions, preferring to make small changes throughout the year instead. But I think a time to reflect on my recent working practice is due, so will give that some thought soon.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Year in review – running

Paul Strickland — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 22:35:24 +0000

Strava has published its year in sport app and my stats are in:

2506 km travelled
334 hours of activity
14650 m of elevation gain
271 days active

There are some considerable gains for me compared to last year. I covered 600 km more than last year, spent 125 hours more time doing 150 more activities. I only really had one goal for the year and that was to run over 2000 km, so I can be pleased with that achievement.

As for the rest of the stats, I'm pleased overall, but probably not hugely surprised given my routine of running most days of the week. I suppose the extent of climbing and distance covered is the biggest surprise, since the way I have been running has seen the most change.

Sunday has been my "long run" of the week for a long time now. Until this year, it also used to be more of an adventure, and in my fitter periods I would hope to cover between 20 and 25 km off road. Much of this was jogging or walking of course, but it was certainly the big distance of the week. I'd also achieve one or two running workouts a week, with the other days being easy.

This year, Sunday has still been my long run but it has been much shorter, not often more than 16 km or 10 miles. However, I've also changed to running 5 or 6 days a week, the vast majority of which were reasonable distance easy or moderate efforts. Occasionally I did some speed work but really the importance of running this year was for my mental health rather than anything else. I could even go as far as saying that I was commuting via my morning runs.

Right now I am not going to set any goals for next year, except that I will keep running and try to do so whilst remaining healthy and free from injury.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Work vs rest

Paul Strickland — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 13:19:42 +0000

When I finish work on a Friday afternoon or evening, my mind is excited by the prospect of an entire weekend of possibility. I think about how much progress I'll be able to make on my personal projects and still get time to watch all those films and shows I've been adding to my list. But then by Saturday evening I realise that an entire day has gone past with little to show for it; certainly not the extent of progress I had anticipated.

Why is this? Am I being lazy, or do I overestimate what I can actually achieve at the same time as underestimating the need for rest?

Working is hard work

My job encourages me to be sedentary – I have to prompt myself to get up and walk around to get any physical exercise. And although there are aspects of my work that are noticeably difficult and require a lot of active problem solving, these days my time could be completely spent writing emails or talking to people about their own work instead. On the face of it, it is hard to describe my job as exhausting.

I do not want to pretend that my job is physically demanding. At the same time, a full day spent working through my list of tasks will leave me feeling tired, and by the time I go to bed I am usually well and truly ready to sleep. I think that, over the course of a week, this fatigue builds up to the point that the weekend needs to include a large amount of rest.

I also run. Given the pandemic, working from home and the other mental challenges of this year, I now run almost every day. The one certain exception to this is Saturday. So, having a rest from physical activity is guaranteed, and I think that I unconsciously also need and take a mental rest on a Saturday too.

Rest is vital

I haven't yet fully accepted the idea that Saturday is best spent totally resting. As such, I expect more than I achieve, and that can lead to disappointment and frustration at feeling lazy. The positive side to this, however, is that Sundays, whether as a response to my disappointment or because of the benefits achieved by resting on Saturdays, are the days that I can accomplish some of my goals.

Looking over a longer period of time I see something similar with my response to taking time off: I feel exhausted and lazy for the duration.

It's not really true that I am lazy during these inadvertent rest days. On Saturdays I find myself doing the more mindless chores that need doing. I also read magazines, books and online articles that have stacked up over the week. Finally, I also find great joy in doing jigsaw puzzles.

On other days and weeks off work I tend to exercise less and sleep more, but I also spend time with my family. This can be both mentally and physically tiring (especially when my niece and nephew are around), but in a very different way to my working life. The jigsaw puzzles and reading also feature heavily during time off.

The more I think about the way I actually live, compared to my aspirations of what is possible and my perceived shortcomings, the more I start to appreciate the necessity of rest. Rather than thinking of it as an absence of doing something more valuable, rest itself is the valuable activity.

Give yourself a break

As we near the end of this difficult and traumatic year, I have been reflecting on how fortunate I have been in so many ways:

I stayed healthy, as have my family and friends
I discovered the positive side of working from home
My employer has shown that the company can succeed by trusting its employees and has provided clear guidance about the way we should work (in many ways it has provided vital leadership in the absence of a competent government)
My workload was manageable enough that I had free time in the evenings and at weekends without having to worry
I was able to have time off and visit my family periodically

Now that I have started to realise the value of rest, and given that I have the luxury to do so, it's something I want to embrace. I need to make the most of my rest so that I can effectively manage my work and home life in a way that doesn't compromise the support I give to colleagues, family and friends, the service I deliver to my customers, and the quality of my own physical and mental wellbeing.

I hope that if you are able to do so, you can also take the time to let yourself rest and know that you deserve it.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

How I learn

Paul Strickland — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 22:48:56 +0000

It's fair to say that I have an interest in a broad range of topics. It's also fair to say that I don't like to dive down into the detail of any one of them. To find out about something I'm slightly interested in, I'll read the introduction, see some examples and follow a tutorial if it's available. If the tool, language or technology is well documented, I'll usually feel like I know enough about it to have a go at making something. Of course at that point everything falls apart.

Reading isn't enough

I am quite a fast reader. My job involves reading a lot, and over the years I have developed my ability to scan a document when looking for something specific. Usually, because I understand the subject of what I am reading, I don't need to process every detail that is written to have a good idea of what's going on.

When I read something that is less well known to me (e.g. most of the world of software development), I still read with the confidence that I have with other material. But when it comes to actually trying to use that information, I quickly fail.

This experience was highlighted to me at the weekend when I committed to completing a working version of a Svelte app I had been messing around with. Despite reading a lot, watching a lot, following tutorials and so on, when it came to knowing what to do for myself, I struggled a lot.

I learn by doing

I had a frustrating time. There were so many aspects I wanted to use and had already played with, but trying to put them together in a way that worked and that did something that I had only the vaguest idea of was a struggle. However, by stripping the project back to its most basic, I was able to focus on one problem at a time. By doing this, not only could I spend more time understanding what was going on, but I benefited from many small (tiny) achievements rather than waiting for one big success.

By the end of the weekend, I had a very simple application that I could run and, more importantly, that I understood. I followed this achievement by implementing some tooling to make my development process a bit easier, looking at good practice for git commits, linting etc.

I learn slowly

Not only to I need to make something in order to really start to understand it, it takes me a very long time. I think this is more to do with wanting to do many things and being impatient than anything else. A learning capacity problem: I can't manage learning Svelte (and therefore JavaScript and/or TypeScript), Tailwind CSS (and design ideas in general), API design, CI principles, etc all at the same time, despite being interested in it all. But if I can focus on one thing at a time, I should hopefully be able to get there.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

More dark mornings

Paul Strickland — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 22:16:39 +0000

Here in the northern hemisphere the mornings are very dark. Despite it happening every year, I always find myself struggling to adapt. We had some brief respite by moving our clocks back an hour, but that advantage is well and truly lost now.

In my evolving year of working remotely, running has installed itself at the start of my day. I guess it's almost like a commute for me now. I have mornings where I can barely function, and others where I spring out of bed, but for the vast majority of the time I head out the door and run for up to an hour. Whatever state I left the house in, when I return I am awake: it's good.

After my run, I have just enough time to shower and dress, make a cup of tea and head into my office. It can be a bit hurried, especially when it's so dark that I head out a few minutes late, but sitting down to start the day by 8am is achievable. It's a routine that works well enough for me that I actually look forward to "heading to work". The run has allowed me to clear my mind and I usually have a good idea of what I need to do during the day.

The end of the day is less well defined, and it's something I still need to work on.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Just build it

Paul Strickland — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 21:03:22 +0000

Over the past ten years or more, I've had several ideas for personal projects. Some were to solve a business problem, others as a way to learn a different technology and some even to hedge against needing to change careers at some point in the future. Coming up with an idea is not a problem for me, especially at work. It might be seen by some as disruptive but I am often an advocate for ripping up the rule book and starting again.

Lazy perfectionist

Despite having lots of ideas, converting that into a working project is rare, and finishing a project is even rarer. I think that I have a mindset something like a "lazy perfectionist". I want the thing I'm producing to be perfect, but struggle to put the effort in to learn everything I need to do that, and eventually it gets replaced by my next great idea.

Down the rabbit hole again

My idea is a set of tools that I can use at work to help us get better at capturing requirements. Just some simple utilities such as checklists with guide words, asking five whys and so on. But why not make it into a little app?

The project is small enough for me to get started and would help me develop skills that I don't have much use for at the moment. Unfortunately, I have already gone right down into the weeds with this project. Rather than just getting a form built, I decided I needed to learn about CI/CD, API design, Svelte, Tailwind, Go, etc. And that's before going down the machine learning rabbit hole for another idea I had.

Just build it

I was listening to a podcast lately – unfortunately I can't remember which one – and this idea came up in the conversation. The robust response to this problem is one I've heard before, but I hardly ever do it: just build it.

This time then, I am committing to trying to get something built. I still want to use the tools I've been practising, but I want to focus on the absolute minimum first. If I get something that works, I will allow myself to develop it further. Let's see how it goes…

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash.

The joy of diagramming

Paul Strickland — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 11:52:05 +0000

The past few days have been a bit frustrating for me. There was a touch of uncertainty about work and the annoying inaction that that caused in my daily activity. This was all swept away after I had the opportunity to get stuck into some of my favourite work: diagramming.

Generally I am quite a visual thinker. Although I love writing and the craft of carefully constructing a sentence to communicate exactly the right message and nothing more, when it comes to formulating ideas and a plan of action, I work in diagrams.

I use diagrams to break down a complex idea or design an approach to solve a problem. I use diagrams to structure my thoughts and communicate them. And I use diagrams as a way to learn about what I'm trying to do (I primarily use yED, the free graph editor from yWorks).

This week, after its sluggish start and lack of direction, I had an idea about an approach to take for a particular task. I started looking at a large diagram that forms the basis to most of our work (you could think of it a bit like a tree diagram that breaks down the ultimate goal into a hierarchy of sub-goals). My original intention was to "read" the diagram as part of a mind-mapping a new plan. But then I realised that I could extend the diagram in a way that would both solve my particular problem but be easier to explain to those people I needed to share it with.

Not only was the use of the diagram a good starting point for me, as I began to work with it, I found that it drove some of my thoughts; rather than simply being a space for me to work, it actively helped to structure my work.

I realise that this post is quite abstract and lacks any useful illustration, but unfortunately that's the nature of this particular work. However, the point I'm really aiming for is to encourage you to think about the ways you work best, and to try to incorporate those more into your work. For me, having a diagramming tool at my fingertips provides me with inspiration, motivation and a place to work that's better than the alternative of writing an email or a note to myself. It may well be different for you depending on how you work, but I do think it's worth a bit of time to think about this so that you have the opportunity to not only be effective, but to enjoy it too.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days to Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Photo by Vojtech Bruzek on Unsplash.

Lockdown part 2

Paul Strickland — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 21:32:55 +0000

Here in the UK we are into week two of our second national lockdown. The rules are much like the first, but there is far more activity on the roads than I expected; it really doesn't seem like there has been much change in people's behaviour.

Of course it may be that, like myself, many people have kept their way of life the same ever since the end of March. I often talk to people about this, bemused that anyone has the sense that we ever emerged from a lockdown only to go back into it. For me, I started working from home full time, stopped travelling nearly as much as I used to, avoided busy places even more and that's pretty much how it's stayed.

Because my behaviour has been fairly constant, and because I don't live in an area badly hit by this virus or know people who do, it becomes very difficult to appreciate the changing state of the country. Everything has stayed the same for me. This has had a noticeable effect on my ability to sense time. Because so much of my waking life is broadly similar, telling the time without checking has become surprisingly difficult. And with winter coming, even the daylight seems to conspire to confuse me with its perpetual gloominess: it could be 9am or 3pm and I would struggle to tell the difference.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

Getting Tailwind CSS and Svelte working together

Paul Strickland — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:22:19 +0000

Following my last post I had to do some further work to get a Svelte and Tailwind CSS development environment up and running. I used this post (and its comments) as a guide:

A simpler way to add TailwindCSS to your Svelte project

inalbant ・ May 8 '20 ・ 2 min read

#tailwindcss #svelte #postcss #purgecss

To process the CSS when running the dev server, an additional npm package was required. I also forgot to install the prettier code formatter so I grabbed that too:

npm i npm-run-all prettier prettier-plugin-svelte --save-dev

The following scripts then needed to be added to package.json to enable reloading to occur properly when running npm run dev:

"scripts": {
  "autobuild": "rollup -c -w",
  "watch:tailwind": "postcss public/tailwind.css -o public/index.css -w",
  "dev": "run-p autobuild watch:tailwind"
}

This is just another reminder for myself to eventually gather all the steps in one place. Check out the post above for more guidance about the setup.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.