PinkLetter - My girlfriend can't stop talking about her new hairdresser

Welcome to my PinkLetter. A short, weekly, technology-agnostic, and pink newsletter where we cultivate timeless skills in web development.

My Ramblings This Week

I’m obsessed with specialization lately. And you should too.

Last week, I told you that it’s best to answer “what do you do?” with the reply you would give to “what impact do you enable?”

I don’t know about you but “I’m a web developer” doesn’t mean anything to me—I’m not pointing fingers, though: I’m struggling like hell to answer the question myself.

However, it can be difficult to spot a problem when you are too close to it. So let me share a story from a different industry.

My girlfriend visited a hairdresser a few days ago: she cannot stop talking about it. But what the hell does this hairdresser do differently?

They restore your natural curls. It’s as simple as that.

Notice that the positioning doesn’t focus on themselves and who they are (hairdresser). It’s all about the transformation they enable for the client (it’s about you).

Elsewhere on the Web

In Defence of the Single Page Application by William Kennedy

(Riccardo: Maybe if I wait for a second more..)

GraphQL is a Trap? by Marc-André Giroux

This twitter thread blew up on twitter yesterday and I thought I’d go over some of the author’s points in a longer format so we can clear up some misconceptions. Let’s go over them one by one!

(Riccardo: A rebuttal to the Twitter thread I shared last week.)

How Affordable Insulin Happened by Martin Van Trieste on Juicebox Podcast

Martin Van Trieste is the President and Chief Executive Officer, Civica Rx. Civica is making affordable insulin.

(Riccardo: This contains an excellent explanation of how pharma can skyrocket prices and how Civica Rx shows them the middle finger.)