Brandon Severin

Modern web development has become incredibly complex. We build layers upon layers of abstraction to render simple text on a screen.

There is a certain beauty in the raw <p> tag. It loads instantly. It is readable on everything from a 4K monitor to a terminal browser. It respects the user's agent stylesheet.

This blog attempts to replicate that feeling. No heavy CSS frameworks (well, we use Tailwind utility classes to mimic the lack of style, ironically), no 5MB JavaScript bundles for a simple article.

The Aesthetic of Information

When you remove the decoration, only the content remains. If the content isn't good, you can't hide it behind a parallax scroll effect.

For the last two years, we've been stuck in the chat box.

"Chat with your data." "Chat with your PDF." "Chat with your customer support."

But the real shift happens when the AI stops talking and starts doing. We are seeing the early signs of agentic workflows—models that can plan, execute, and verify complex tasks without human hand-holding.

The bottleneck isn't intelligence anymore; it's reliability and latency. Once we solve that, software fundamentally changes from a tool we use to a teammate we delegate to.

1. Ship early. Perfection is the enemy of feedback. If you aren't embarrassed by your v1, you launched too late.

2. Delete code. The best code is no code. Every line you write is a liability that needs to be tested, maintained, and read by someone else.

3. Optimize for change. Requirements will change. The market will change. Build systems that are loosely coupled so you can pivot without rewriting the world.

A few books I've been revisiting:

• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's startling how much of the modern metaverse and crypto landscape was predicted here.

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Essential reading for anyone building user interfaces.

• Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham. Still the best collection of essays on the philosophy of software creation.

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in how we interact with computers.

For decades, the paradigm has been direct manipulation: point, click, type. You tell the computer exactly what to do, step by step.

Autonomous agents change this. You define the goal, and the agent figures out the steps.

The Loop

1. Perceive: The agent reads the screen or API.
2. Think: It uses an LLM to decide on an action.
3. Act: It clicks a button or sends a request.
4. Learn: It sees the result and adjusts.

This loop allows for software that feels less like a tool and more like an employee. The UI implications are massive.

React Server Components (RSC) are controversial. They blur the line between backend and frontend in a way that makes many uncomfortable.

But if you look past the complexity of the implementation, the mental model is sound.

Sending zero JavaScript for a static blog post (like this one) while keeping the ability to hydrate interactive islands is the holy grail. It's what we tried to do with Islands Architecture, but baked into the framework itself.

Yes, it feels a bit like we've reinvented PHP. But PHP with component encapsulation is actually a pretty good idea.

For the past decade, we've obsessed over Design Systems. Tokens, atomic design, strict component libraries.

It was necessary because maintaining consistency across 100+ screens by hand is impossible.

But Generative UI is changing the calculus. If an AI generates the interface on the fly based on user intent, strict static design systems become less important than rules of engagement.

We will move from designing screens to designing constraints.

The biggest mistake technical founders make is writing code too early.

Code is expensive. It has bugs. It needs maintenance.

A landing page is cheap. A Figma prototype is cheap. A conversation with a customer is free.

Validate the problem before you validate the solution. If people aren't complaining about the problem, no amount of beautiful code will make them care about your solution.

"100ms is instantaneous. 1 second is a pause. 10 seconds is a distraction."

In a world of heavy SPAs and hydration delays, a site that loads instantly feels magical.

We've become too comfortable with loading spinners. A spinner is an admission of failure. It says "our architecture is too slow for your thought process."

Aggressive pre-fetching, optimistic UI updates, and edge caching aren't optimizations; they are requirements for modern UX.

I still see projects with "strict": false in their tsconfig.json.

This defeats the purpose of TypeScript. The "any" type is a virus that spreads throughout your codebase, silently disabling the type checker.

Yes, strict mode is annoying at first. It forces you to handle null and undefined explicitly. But that is exactly where 90% of runtime errors come from.

Pay the tax upfront, or pay it with interest during a production outage.