Den Odell’s Journal

Memory leaks are a constant battle for backend teams.

Like many developers, I now lean on AI as a big part of my day-to-day tooling.

Some browsers ship code that checks which domain you’re visiting and changes how the page renders based on it.

In 2002, I was a few weeks into a new role, my second since completing my degree two years earlier.

Pretext, a new JavaScript library from Cheng Lou, crossed 7,000 GitHub stars in its first three days.

In 1984, Steve Jobs walked over to a bag standing on stage and pulled out a computer that would change the world.

After 25 years building sites for global brands, I kept seeing the same pattern appear.

When a user visits your site or app, their browser dedicates a single thread to running your JavaScript, handling their interactions, and painting what they see on the screen.

Frameworks were supposed to free us from the messy parts of the web.

Every developer knows <input>.

Most frontend reviews pass quickly.

We’ve been building for the web for decades.

The next big thing in web development isn’t a framework.

Apparently, frontend developers are about to be made obsolete.

Not every site needs to be a full-blown app.

Before flex, before grid, even before float, we still had to lay out web pages.

You’re going to hate me for saying this, but I actually like being on-call.