The Nayed Blog: Nayed Saïd Ali's personal blog

Should (web) developers design?

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Throughout my still young career I’ve heard plenty of time stuff like “eww CSS” “I hate CSS” “I can’t design” when talking design with developers and I…

Bewilderment. The writer’s face, approximately, on hearing “I hate CSS.”

This. This is something I don’t get. Because one of the main reason why I’m in this industry is because 10 years-old-Nayed saw websites that were so awesome he knew that this is what he wanted to do when growing up. So I’m always wondering how can people want to work as a ~~software~~ ~~enginer~~ web developer without liking the design part of the job? Yo how did you end up here, don’t tell me it’s because younger you saw databases transactions or tree algorithms and you were in such awe that it was your call to be a web developer.

So as you can guess, this is a very opiniated post.

Should (web) developers design?

For me, it’s a yes. Definitely. But when I’m talking design, I’m not saying devs should know how to use Photoshop/Sketch/Figma/[insert your favorite design app]. Or not saying they should know how to design Awwwards level. Nope. That’s not even the same job. All I’m saying is devs should know basic CSS stuff, how to not make your users run away of your website because of bad design decision and you should be proud of your design.

I am not a designer but I believe the design is an important step of the website. It’s how you want people to see what you have envisioned. I know this is not a simple task but I always try to have different design website to website. Not to brag (again, I’m not a designer), here are some of my latest open source toy project:

Exhibit A · nayed.io

Exhibit B · nayed.blog

Exhibit C · Pokédex

For the defence: the writer’s latest open source toy projects.

I am no expert, nor trying to revolutionize the design industry, but I can say that I’m damn proud of those design and how these website feel.

The Early Years

Off course at the beginning of my journey CSS was hard (and still is, let’s not pretend it’s an easy programming language because it is not). Here are some of my first websites when I was in school around 2011-2013 (I think):

Quizz Sida · c. 2011

Espace Design · c. 2013

Yeah not very attractive isn't it?

In french we have this proverb:

« c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron »
“It’s by smithing that one becomes a blacksmith”

which means “practice makes perfect” (the literal translation would be “it’s by smithing that one becomes a blacksmith”) and this is also why devs should design. How can you expect to upgrade your design skills and your design “sensibility” if you despise and avoid it?

The Verdict

Yes, in their own way, developers should design. Again I know this is a very opiniated view, but for me a web developer that doesn’t want to design it’s like a baker that doesn’t want to bake. That doesn’t make any sense.

Design is the best way to show your user what you have pictured. It is the part of the iceberg that people will see first. And let’s be honest, it feels damn good to be proud of your own design when showing off.

My first (React) meetup

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been almost a year since I moved to Paris and one of the reason was because of the tech industry. Compared to back home in Lyon, here in Paris the tech community is bigger, more vibrant and more people are involved therefore it has more big tech conferences like React Europe, dotGo or dotJS.

I love watching those kind of conferences on Youtube and I always wanted to attend to one of those. Ironically, after a year in Paris I didn’t find the ~~courage~~ time to participate to a single one. So at the beginning of this year I told myself “Ok Nayed, this year you are going to attend to one of those tech gathering”.

React being my main front tool for the past couple of years it was a no brainer when I saw that there was a group called ReactJS-Paris. I knew I had to go.
And here I was, attending my first tech meetup yesterday.

The event was held in Algolia’s Paris office (nice office by the way). There were two talks that night, the first one on Service Worker and Progressive Web Apps and the second one on animation in React Native. Two good talks, I prefered the second one because I have never tried React Native and it looked pretty familiar to React. Nonetheless I wasn’t there for the talks, I was there for the community. And I was there to meet people that uses React!

At my previous job I was the only React dev there and so I did not have any React related talk with any member of the team. And here, I’m finally talking to people IRL about React. I heard what they were building with it, heard their experiences and all and share mines! That was a really fun experience!

Before going to the meeting, I don’t know why but I thought that there will be only big-grey-beard-with-15-years-of-exp developers (yes I know that so cliché) and I will be Mr N00b (… I feel stupid thinking like that). Off course that was not the case. People from all kind of experiences were there.

I talk for about 30min to a guy who was neither working with React nor React Native, he was a game developer looking to switch to the web world. Having worked in a mobile video game startup recently (as a fullstack web developer, not a game developer) I understood his motives for switching industry and I was confident to guide him. And I think I was pretty good.

Another thing that I enjoyed was the demographic of the attendees. Since my first programming courses back in 2011 to now I interacted with one fellow brother at school, another one at work, two girls at school and none at work! (In 8 years! Yo how is that even possible???) And here I was meeting with a dozen of developers from minorities. That was unexpected! I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Needless to say, I was hooked to attend another meeting!

Yep, I’m definitly sure that I will attend another meeting, maybe the next ReactJS-Paris, maybe another tech-related one or maybe a non tech-related meetup, who knows. And I ~~hope~~ will ~~try to~~ attend my first tech conference this year. Yep, this is the year where I will try to connect to the tech community.

Another thing that is on my todo list, not really related to this article, is to participate to the open source community this year by making pull requests to projects that I use. I’m so glad to be working in this decade where ~~almost~~ everything is free/open sourced. I want to give back to this community.
I have so much respect for developers that are actively commiting to the OS world and I aspire to be one of them, someday.

To wrap things up, this year is the year where I will finally reach the tech community 😊.

Origin story

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Alright. I think this is the 4th time in 6 years that I’m starting a new blog. But this time, this is it. This time I’ll be serious about blogging. I took several days for learning Gatsby, for designing and for coding this blog. I bought this kickass nayed.blog domain name. I already have several posts idea for this blog. Yep, everything is set for me to finally blog. For real.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Nayed Saïd Ali and I’ll be talking about tech stuff and other non-related tech stuff.

But what I like to start as a first post is my story. Here it is.

The Islands. Comoros, between the coast of Africa and Madagascar: Moroni, and Mayotte across the water.

I was born February 6, 1992, in a little archipelago between Africa and Madagascar called Comoros. Born in Moroni the capital city of Comoros. But actually I did not lived there, you see Comoros are made of 4 islands and I lived the first 8 years of my life on the island of Mayotte.

I lived a quiet and peaceful life there, without knowing the cold, the pollution or other #FirstWorldProblem /s.
I had a fantastic childhood there. I remember playing outside with friends and playing at home hours and hours of Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken and other 90s games on the PlayStation. Yep, a very basic childhood in the 90’s. When I was playing the Ps1, I remember asking my parents and other relatives HOW video games were made. It was so fascinating it seemed almost magical. And I think it’s at that time that I begun my interest in computers. There was an Internet café that openned across the street and I was mesmerized by those little bright interactive tv-box-thing…

Then in late 2000 we moved to France (not my first time there, we travelled quite a lot in my childhood) in Marseille. We did not stay there very long, less than a year.

The Mainland. Marseille, then Lyon, then, much later, Paris.

And then we moved to the city I consider it to be my hometown, my spot, my hills, my heaven, my hood: Lyon. (Yes I’m a very proud lyonnais).
I stayed there from 9 to 26 years-old. Those 17 years were incredible. It’s the end of my childhood, all of my teenagehood and the beginning of my adulthood.

And this is were one of my big passion has its roots. From elementary school to high school I saw the football team of my city, l’Olympique Lyonnais win 7 successive domestic titles (a record in France.. and maybe in Europe?). I remember every big wins and wins and losses. I saw them beating some of the best european teams like Manchester United or Bayern Munich and humiliating Real Madrid for years and years (3-0, 2-0, 1-0, and in round of 16). It was so good. And I was angry and sad when they lost the most important games in the Champions League. Well you probably get the idea. This is my favorite football team.

In the meantime, I had my first computer at 11 years old in 2003. An awesome Packard Bell that lasted 8 years, which for today electronic device seems like an eternity. With it, oh boy, I have so many hours of play-time. I don’t play a lot of different games, but when I choose a game it’s for 1000’s hours. Mostly on this bad boy, I played Rappelz (a korean MMORPG), Trackmania, Civilization, GTA San Andreas and you can already guess my favorite game: FIFA.

Like every teens of my generation, the internet was my playground. We stayed hours chatting on MSN, laughing at memes and watching funny and dumb videos on Dailymotion and later Youtube. Everyone of us had a Skyblog (a kind of french tumblr) or a MySpace (I did not have one, and never ‘got it’). And all of a sudden, Facebook was THE thing to have (funny to see how less and less of my friends are using it now..).

Alright let’s go back in time a little bit. We are somewhere between 2005 and 2006. Maybe sooner maybe later I don’t recall. At that time I encoutered a website that will change my life and is one of the main reason why I have chosen to be a web developer.

You know how people says that Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry right? So who revolutionized the web industry? Do you remember how websites looked like in 2000-2010? Basically, it was kind of like looking at.. documents? And you were scrolling pages til the end unless there was a link to click on to open that will redirect you to an another document to scroll etc. So how were we able to move from that era to interactive website, live-streaming content and 360° videos?

For me, there is this website that blew my mind (and honestly I will not be surprised to hear if that was also the case for the web industry). This website is.. Google Earth.

Remember, I mean remember! Almost all of the websites looked like documents with some colors, pictures and links. And then there was Google Earth. YO THIS SHIT WAS LIT 🔥🔥🔥 (and still is). You could see the Earth, rotate it, zoom to some random area in the world and just, play around. It was as interactive as.. as a video game in a web browser! This was my second HOW did they made it???
That’s it. This. Right there. I wanna make some awesome cool stuff on the web when I’ll be an adult. This was my calling to become a web developer. Definitely.

And here I am, after years of programming at school and several internships, I moved from Lyon to Paris, to be closer to companies that influences the internet and to fulfill my dream.

So welcome to my blog. My name is Nayed Saïd Ali and I’ll be talking about tech stuff and other non-related tech stuff.