Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Jim Nielsen — Web developer and design thinker
Thoughtful essays on web development, design patterns, and the human side of technology.
blog.jim-nielsen.comIn an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying 'no' is more valuable than ever.
Jim writes the kind of web design blog that makes you stop and reconsider things you thought you understood. His essays explore the philosophy behind interface decisions — why buttons feel unresponsive, what it means to say "no" in product design, the difference between "easy" and "simple." It's less tutorial, more slow thinking about the craft of building for the web.
Written by Jim Nielsen since 2012.
Regular
Publishes weekly or bi-weekly
14
Independent Blog
English
How this blog's content is accessed through Blogs Are Back.
Full Content
RSS feed includes complete post content for reading in-app
Proxy Required
Feed is fetched through our proxy for browser compatibility
Proxy Post Links
Post pages are loaded through our proxy for compatibility
Embeddable
Posts can be displayed inline in the reader view
This blog appears in the following curated collections.
Recent posts from Jim Nielsen’s Blog's RSS feed.
w0rdz aRe 1mpoRtAnt
The other day I was looking at the team billing section of an AI product. They had a widget labeled “Usage leaderboard”. For whatever reason, that phrase at that moment made me pause and reflect — and led me here to this post. It’s an interesting label. You could argue the widget doesn’t even need a label. You can look at it and understood at a glance: “This is a list of people sorted by their AI usage, greatest to least.” But it has that label. It could have a different label. Imagine, for a m...
Book Notes: “Blood In The Machine” by Brian Merchant
For my future self, these are a few of my notes from this book. A take from one historian on the Luddite movement: If workmen disliked certain machines, it was because of the use that they were being put, not because they were machines or because they were new Can’t help but think of AI. I don’t worry about AI becoming AGI and subjugating humanity. I worry that it’s put to use consolidating power and wealth into the hands of a few at the expense of many. The Luddites smashed things: to destr...
Computers and the Internet: A Two-Edged Sword
Dave Rupert articulated something in “Priority of idle hands” that’s been growing in my subconscious for years: I had a small, intrusive realization the other day that computers and the internet are probably bad for me […] This is hard to accept because a lot of my work, hobbies, education, entertainment, news, communities, and curiosities are all on the internet. I love the internet, it’s a big part of who I am today Hard same. I love computers and the internet. Always have. I feel lucky to h...
Making Icon Sets Easy With Web Origami
Over the years, I’ve used different icon sets on my blog. Right now I use Heroicons. The recommended way to use them is to copy/paste the source from the website directly into your HTML. It’s a pretty straightforward process: Go to the website Search for the icon you want Hover it Click to “Copy SVG” Go back to your IDE and paste it If you’re using React or Vue, there are also npm packages you can install so you can import the icons as components. But I’m not using either of those frameworks,...
How AI Labs Proliferate
SITUATION: there are 14 competing AI labs. “We can’t trust any of these people with super-intelligence. We need to build it ourselves to ensure it’s done right!" “YEAH!” SOON: there are 15 competing AI labs. (See: xkcd on standards.) The irony: “we’re the responsible ones” is each lab’s founding mythology as they spin out of each other. Reply via: Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
If you enjoy Jim Nielsen’s Blog, you might also like these blogs.
Interconnected
interconnected.orgA blog by Matt Webb. My notebook and space for thinking out loud since February 2000.
Matthias Ott
matthiasott.comWhere Matthias writes about design, development, CSS, and the open web.
Ethan Marcotte
ethanmarcotte.comResponsive web design (coined the term), accessibility, web standards.
Maggie Appleton
maggieappleton.comEssays on programming, design, and anthropology
Follow Jim Nielsen’s Blog
If you care about why things are designed the way they are — not just how to build them — Jim's writing will give you a lot to chew on.