Gemma Croad

The bogong moths are back, in numbers we haven't seen for years. I love seeing them, but they really should be contributing to the mortgage at this point 😅 I still enjoys writing code, particularly CSS. So, the moths are the inspo for my latest @codepen.io creation! codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

This started as an internal blog post at work, but someone suggested it should be shared wider, so here it is. If I ask you what you think, I don't want a synthesised overview. I want your answer. The raw, rough-edged, messy, human one... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

This video about the impact of AI on mental health should be mandatory viewing for anyone using the technology...

The pitch was that AI meets you where no one else can, always available, never judgemental. That's not what made it safe. That's what made it dangerous... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

@heydonworks.com has been busy building HYPERBLAM, a declarative, dependency-free implementation of the Web Audio API that lets you create pedal boards, drum machines, and sampled instruments using nothing but HTML… 😍 🎵 hyperblam.how

The most dangerous gap in engineering right now is not incompetence. It is confident incompetence. Engineers who can defend every decision in a code review and go completely quiet when something breaks in production... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

We've never treated human expression as a finite resource. The models are starting to disagree... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The Vatican published a formal doctrinal letter about AI this month. It's not about religion. It's about what we risk losing. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Engineers are doing two jobs right now. Only one of them is tracked. The people burning out aren't the ones who can't handle the pace. They're the ones taking both jobs seriously. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Continuing to explore some fun retro vibes over on @codepen.io...!!! 😁 👾 🎮 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

Going to show my age here with this vintage VHS tape inspired @codepen.io creation....!!! 😅 💜 📼 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

Putting a name against an output isn't the same as being responsible for it. Most organisations haven't noticed the difference yet... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

AI didn't remove the slow work. It just made skipping it easier. The slow phase never produced commits or closed tickets. It just meant someone understood the problem before anyone opened a laptop. That's why it's the first thing to go... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Something's happening to the web. Not a quality problem exactly, the landing pages are competent, the copy is clear, the design is clean. But you can't remember any of them five minutes later... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

She said fine. She meant functional within constraints you can't see. Most engineering managers have no idea their team members are running a calculation about whether this organisation can hold their life. By the time it becomes visible, she's already decided. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The entry-level numbers have shifted. The leadership numbers mostly haven't. That's not a pipeline problem. By mid-career, most women in engineering have enough data to know exactly what's happening... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The messy apology lands harder than the polished one. Not because of the words. Because you can see the cost of sending it. Once you know that, everything else looks different. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The checklist for building agents assumes a human is in the room at every step. Evaluating the output. In agentic workflows that step gets optimised away. When something goes wrong in a chain of automated decisions, what does the trail look like? Who owns the output? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

You didn't build a dependency on an API. You built it on a company. Its ethics, its political exposure, its CEO's willingness to say no in public. Most risk assessments didn't cover that. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

A contributor opens a PR. The code is clean, the tests pass. The reviewer asks a question. The author can't explain it because they didn't write it. The reviewer approves it anyway. One PR like this is a minor risk. A year of them is a codebase nobody actually owns... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

If someone writes clean, well-structured code, AI can accelerate them. If someone writes spaghetti, AI just helps them write it faster. AI doesn't fix fundamentals. It amplifies them. And that's widening the gap inside teams, not closing it. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

"Create a caricature based on everything you know about me." People are celebrating how accurately AI can profile them and nobody finds that strange... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

You write something useful, AI trains on it, six months later it gives someone your answer with zero attribution and zero traffic back. The open web ran on: create value, get found, benefit. AI runs on: create value, never get found again... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Looks like Microsoft have just launched a new Inclusive Design website which has been built through co‑design with disabled and neurodivergent collaborators, the new experience focuses on adaptability, usability, and real‑world inclusion... 😍 inclusive.microsoft.design

If you're leading a team or function: how do you know people are telling you the truth? Not in theory. Not because you have an open-door policy. In practice. In the actual moments when you propose something that won't work... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Sharing this because I think Buttered Crumpet is the best typeface name ever, and also because Wallace and Gromit are awesome.... 😊 jamieclarketype.com/case-study/w...

Radio buttons are built into browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another library to rebuild them? How did a native browser control become this complicated? 😢 paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shad...

Trying to keep up with AI is exhausting... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Why do we keep deferring to whoever sounds most certain in technical decisions? Why does admitting "I don't know" look like weakness instead of intellectual honesty? And what are we teaching every engineer who's watching this play out? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Seventeen men walk into a ski resort and write a manifesto about human-centred development. Twenty-five years later we're still blaming teams when it doesn't work. Still sending people on scrum master courses. Still pretending the problem is the people, not the framework. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

My creation for this weeks @codepen.io challenge, something that evokes a feeling of wintertime coziness. There is nowhere I would rather be in the middle of Winter than curled up with a good book and a cup of tea...! 📖 🤎 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

CSS Wrapped 2025 has dropped! 🥳 It’s the annual recap of all things CSS and Web UI that landed in Chrome over the last year. This year was massive, 22 new features made it into the browser to help us build beautiful and better UIs…. 🫶 chrome.dev/css-wrapped-...

We don't talk about the fact that every time you ask ChatGPT to write a poem about your cat, you're contributing to a climate crisis we all claim to care about solving. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Technical interviews filter for people who are good at technical interviews, not people who are good at engineering. We all know this, but we keep doing it anyway. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

This is very cool!!! It's a CSS terrain generator that leverages stacked grids and 3D transforms. Apparently inspired by Transport Tycoon, Sim City and other '90s isometrics classics, it's built with Vue and Nuxt 😍 terra.layoutit.com

A little bit of fun for this weeks @codepen.io challenge using CSS shape() and corner-shape, a random kaleidoscope generator... 🥰 💠 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

We tell ourselves we're optimising. Making things more efficient, more scalable. But what we're actually doing is quietly redesigning human work to fit AI's limitations one "optimisation" at a time. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Measuring productivity makes everyone less productive. We optimise for what gets counted, and the work becomes producing metrics. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

When you start with "we need to use AI" and work backwards to find problems, you're not solving technical challenges. You're avoiding uncomfortable conversations about what you're actually trying to accomplish. The hard part isn't building AI, it's knowing when not to. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

We're practising how to talk to something that never challenges us, never misunderstands us, never requires us to deal with messy human communication. The more we practice that, the worse we get at the real thing. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

AI uses more confident language when it's making things up than when it's actually right. We're dealing with pattern-matching systems that don't know when they don't know something. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

💥 did a small drawing explaining the JS execution model including the event loop. I hope it’s helpful to folks. Debugging is always easier when the underlying implementations are understood.

I created this vintage colour theory poster for this weeks @codepen.io challenge! It's a loving tribute to those beautiful scientific colour wheel prints I was obsessed with as a child (and honestly still am)... 🥰 🌈 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

"Culture fit" in tech hiring often means "doesn't make us uncomfortable by questioning how we do things." But what if the person who doesn't quite fit is exactly what your team needs? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

There's something bothering me about engineering promotions. We assume good coders automatically make good leaders. Spoiler: it doesn't work that way. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Searched for banana bread recipes lately? You'll find "The Ultimate Guide to Perfect Banana Bread: 15 Amazing Variations" written by a system that can't actually taste, touch, or try anything. This is AI slop. And it's breaking how we learn from each other. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

This is a bit of a stroll down memory lane bradfrost.com/blog/post/th...

“Why do we need all these engineers when AI can just… write the code for us?” Because engineering is mostly not coding. It's figuring out what you're actually trying to build and why. medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The tech industry promises AI will free us up for more creative work. But what happens when we outsource creativity itself? I’m curious to hear your thoughts, especially if you work in a creative field. How are you thinking about this balance? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

How is your organisation thinking about the intersection of design systems and AI? I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I'd love to chat if this is the space you're working in 🙂 medium.com/@gemma.croad...