Learn & Unlearn

learn and unlearn

Last November during Converge FL, I had the good fortune to hear Sam Kapila from Iron Yard speak. Something she said that resonates with me today is we need to always be unlearning and learning. With HTTP2 about to change everything, I am finding myself unlearning performance best practices and learning new ones.

It is well known that reducing http requests is a major enhancement to performance of a site. With users spending little time on a site before deciding to leave or continue on, it is essential that your content load quickly. The impact of slower network connections for some mobile devices compounds this truth.

Reducing http requests comes in the form of sprites for UI design elements, combining style sheets, and combining scripts among other strategies. These best practices will soon become counterproductive and lead to slow load times. Check out this article for an articulate run down of what we are doing that we need to stop doing.

Given that I am in a field that is fluid and always changing, a constant state of learning and unlearning can not be overemphasised. A great reciepe for staying up to date can be found here.