Dave Rupert
Dave Rupert
Dave Rupert
I'm Dave Rupert, I write web components at Microsoft and am co-host of ShopTalk, a podcast about front-end web design and development. Previously, I co-founded a startup called Luro and an agency called Paravel with two of my best friends. I'm married to the drummer of a mid-2000s indie rock band, I'm a dad to two wonderful kids, and I live in Austin, TX where I work out of my backyard office.
Latest Posts
Xavier de Maistre in an armchair, displaying his “book of discoveries” (Veyssier, 1860) Every so often I like to include a public domain image in a blog post. I’m fond of the woodblock and lithographic illustrations of the late 1800s. I...
Named slots are one of web components’ biggest superpowers ✨. Imagine a Button component with an optional icon; in Web Components we don’t need a separate Button and IconButton, a single Button component with <slot name="icon"> will do....
I play Clues by Sam nearly every single day. I wrote about it before, but solving a little crime puzzle adds a micro-thrill to my day. A little blast of logic, misdirection, and wordplay. It’s a frequent topic of conversation in the...
Forgive me, Reader. It’s been five months since my last vibe check. That’s a lot of ground to cover and it’s not possible to get into everything that happened. Like in real life conversations, instead of telling you how I’m doing, I’ll...
I have complex feelings about Generative AI but one area I find myself weirdly bullish on is small language models (SLMs) in the browser which are available in Chrome and Edge behind an experimental flag. I know, I know. I know. AI in...
The use of AI is leading to burnout among its greatest advocates as they hit the limit of their meta-cognitive abilities: “I end each day exhausted—not from the work itself, but from the managing of the work. Six worktrees open, four...
The number of screenshots of Claude conversations is going up in my life and it’s beginning to have an impact on my general mood. Most of the time it’s well-intended; coworkers working through a problem with a chatbot before bothering me...
When you make speed and “moving fast” the biggest priority on a project or in an organization, the first thing to breakdown is talking to each other. Talking takes time. Consensus is expensive and slow. In a pressurized environment...
We rolled out adaptive light-dark() support on our design system themes and it’s been a delightful upgrade. Creating light and dark variable sets isn’t difficult, but delivery has trade-offs. Most apps that do this probably ship both...
It’s a secret to everyone! This post is for RSS subscribers only. Read more about RSS Club. I’ve heard the term “Ozempic face” for awhile. People have opinions about that one, but I tend to feel like we should be comfortable with bodies...
I’ve watched a billion hours of YouTube and I’ve noticed a common trend: Whether that’s a drawing, a video game, a song, a cake, or a whole-ass off-grid house; I’ve learned that it’s fun to watch people make something. Since the...
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect of AI is a pretty well documented phenomenon: The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable...
If I can make it smaller, I should. If I can make it dumber, I should. Smaller, dumber things have more applications, go more places, and require less maintenance.
I had a small, intrusive realization the other day that computers and the internet are probably bad for me. I mean that beyond the general advice to touch grass. From an ADHD and generalized anxiety perspective, computers and the...
Skills are the newest hype commodity in the world of agentic AI. Skills are text files that optionally get stapled onto the context window by the agent. You can have skills like “frontend design” or “design tokens” and if the LLM...