17 Nov '19

benswift.me dev roadmap for 2020

As a developer of web tech curricula (specifically 2D graphics & interaction design in COMP1720) there’s always a tension in trying to just teach the fundamentals and keeping the coursework up-to-date. For the latter, that doesn’t necessarily mean re-writing the course each year with the js framework-du-jour, but it’s useful to at least know what the best practices are and how to point students in a good direction if they want to go deeper.

I try and use this website as a bit of a test-bed for trying new things and staying up to date. So, here’s my list of things to try in 2020:

update to Jekyll 4 (update: done, as of fba9367)
or move this blog from Jekyll to Eleventy (because all the cool kids are on the JAMstack these days) (update: probably not, Jekyll is fine)
switch to Netlify for hosting so that I can use their nice workflow stuff (e.g. serverless functions)
package up my reveal slides plugin on npm (if I switch to Eleventy) or RubyGems (if I stay with Jekyll) so that others can use them
(maybe) re-write the CSS (from the current hand-rolled Sass) to something using a utility class framework like Tailwind (update: actually, my hand-rolled CSS is fine; I’ve got better things to do)

There’s no timeline on any of this, and I’m going to be busy with other things (e.g. my Reimagine Fellowship, updating the Extempore docs and generally doing good research).