Busy Times

Sat, Mar 18, 2023

Things have been humming along at work lately. Between managing my regular workload and a new project or two I’ve taken on, the days seem to fly by. One of the highlights was our recent company-wide tech conference. It’s a fantastic opportunity for everyone to share their expertise, and this year I volunteered for a presentation.

Now, full disclosure – when I initially signed up for a 45-minute slot on planning a full CSS migration to TailwindCSS, I might not have fully grasped the time commitment. But hey, challenges are what keep things interesting!

My presentation covered a lot of ground: where we stand with our current CSS setup, why it needed a refresh, and a deep dive into the features of Tailwind that excite me most. This included exploring custom plugins with JavaScript, leveraging CSS custom properties, and even customizing Tailwind for things like animations and dark/light modes.

To ensure the effectiveness of the migration, I also outlined a plan based on atomic design principles, along with potential roadblocks and how to address them. It took a fair amount of research, writing, and practice demos, but it was well worth it. Diving deeper into aspects of Tailwind I hadn’t used extensively before solidified my understanding and helped me anticipate questions from the audience.

Ultimately, the presentation went over quite well! I received some valuable feedback and even a few accolades from colleagues. But the biggest reward is my own newfound confidence in Tailwind and the solid plan I’ve developed to spearhead the migration.

Speaking of migrations, that leads me to the second project keeping me busy – the actual process itself. It’s a multi-step endeavor, involving a thorough CSS audit, gathering performance metrics, and creating a complete UI inventory. Our application is substantial, with some legacy code, and currently undergoing significant updates (like switching from Vuex to Pinia for state management, and mixins to composables – a Vue 3 update).

It’s a complex project, but a rewarding one. As someone who’s been around the block a few times in the tech world, I find it invigorating to stay up-to-date and tackle new challenges. I’ll keep you posted on our progress!

And here’s a song…