I’ve worked in web development for over twenty years now. Which is roughly long enough to have seen Flash come, go, and sneak back in wearing a wig and calling itself something else.

You’d think after all that time I’d have it all figured out.

I don’t.

There are still days when it all feels like I’ve wandered into a very serious meeting halfway through, with no idea what’s being discussed and everyone speaking in acronyms. The frameworks keep multiplying, best practices shift like sand in a storm, and now there’s AI — which occasionally helps, occasionally sings, and once deleted staging.

So, a while back, I started writing down a few thoughts. Not about how to code (those days are long gone — I now struggle to remember where the semicolons go), but about the other stuff. The human side of the job. The messy, funny, frustrating bits that don’t fit neatly in a tutorial.

These days, I’m a Head of Development. Which mostly involves doing my best to support the brilliant developers I work with, while carefully avoiding sitting on a Jira ticket. I’m a people manager first, a technician second, and a snack-consumer always.

What I’ve realised — as I reread the posts I’ve written — is that most of what I have to say doesn’t sound like a technical blog at all. And frankly, I think that’s for the best. Because some of those early attempts at “professional insight” had all the warmth and flavour of toast left in a glovebox for three weeks.

Still, I do believe there’s value in sharing what I’ve learned. Not because I’ve got all the answers, but because it turns out this industry is a little less baffling when we talk about it like actual humans.

There’ll always be a useful point buried somewhere in each post. You may need to squint to find it. Or wait for my cartoon robot to offer a surprisingly good metaphor before falling over.

But it’ll be there.

Promise.