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Gemma Croad

@gemmacroad.bsky.social
74 followers 199 following 61 posts

Lead Engineer, front-end specialist, a11y and user advocate, creative coder

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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This video about the impact of AI on mental health should be mandatory viewing for anyone using the technology...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
The pitch was that AI meets you where no one else can, always available, never judgemental. That's not what made it safe. That's what made it dangerous... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
It worked as intended
The pitch was consistent. So was the harm.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
@heydonworks.com has been busy building HYPERBLAM, a declarative, dependency-free implementation of the Web Audio API that lets you create pedal boards, drum machines, and sampled instruments using nothing but HTML… 😍 🎵 hyperblam.how
hyperblam.how
Hyperblam Docs Home
Documentation for HyperBlam. Make HTML make music.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The most dangerous gap in engineering right now is not incompetence. It is confident incompetence. Engineers who can defend every decision in a code review and go completely quiet when something breaks in production... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The rise of confident incompetence
Why the most dangerous gap in software engineering is the one we cannot see
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
We've never treated human expression as a finite resource. The models are starting to disagree... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The machines need feeding
AI needs human thought to stay coherent. The models are already noticing.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
The Vatican published a formal doctrinal letter about AI this month. It's not about religion. It's about what we risk losing. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The oldest institution in the room
What it means that the Vatican had something to say about AI
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Engineers are doing two jobs right now. Only one of them is tracked. The people burning out aren't the ones who can't handle the pace. They're the ones taking both jobs seriously. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The burnout problem in engineering
What high standards cost right now
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Continuing to explore some fun retro vibes over on @codepen.io...!!! 😁 👾 🎮 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...
codepen.io
GameBoy
...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Going to show my age here with this vintage VHS tape inspired @codepen.io creation....!!! 😅 💜 📼 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...
codepen.io
Vintage VHS blank tapes
...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Putting a name against an output isn't the same as being responsible for it. Most organisations haven't noticed the difference yet... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Ownership without understanding
Why putting a name against something isn’t the same as being responsible for it
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
AI didn't remove the slow work. It just made skipping it easier. The slow phase never produced commits or closed tickets. It just meant someone understood the problem before anyone opened a laptop. That's why it's the first thing to go... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The invisible phase
AI didn’t remove the slow work, it just made skipping it easier
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Something's happening to the web. Not a quality problem exactly, the landing pages are competent, the copy is clear, the design is clean. But you can't remember any of them five minutes later... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Fast, functional, forgettable
When everything is easy to build, nothing is easy to remember
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
She said fine. She meant functional within constraints you can't see. Most engineering managers have no idea their team members are running a calculation about whether this organisation can hold their life. By the time it becomes visible, she's already decided. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The awareness problem in engineering
Why some of your best engineers are leaving and you never saw it coming
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
The entry-level numbers have shifted. The leadership numbers mostly haven't. That's not a pipeline problem. By mid-career, most women in engineering have enough data to know exactly what's happening... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The diversity problem in engineering
Why the broken rung isn’t an accident
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
The messy apology lands harder than the polished one. Not because of the words. Because you can see the cost of sending it. Once you know that, everything else looks different. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Proof of humanity
What gets lost when communication gets polished
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The checklist for building agents assumes a human is in the room at every step. Evaluating the output. In agentic workflows that step gets optimised away. When something goes wrong in a chain of automated decisions, what does the trail look like? Who owns the output? medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Do you need an agent for that?
The question assumes someone is asking it.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
You didn't build a dependency on an API. You built it on a company. Its ethics, its political exposure, its CEO's willingness to say no in public. Most risk assessments didn't cover that. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
What your AI risk assessment didn’t cover
AI providers aren’t neutral infrastructure and the last week has proved it.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
A contributor opens a PR. The code is clean, the tests pass. The reviewer asks a question. The author can't explain it because they didn't write it. The reviewer approves it anyway. One PR like this is a minor risk. A year of them is a codebase nobody actually owns... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The understanding problem in engineering
Why understanding is becoming engineering’s most ignored risk
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
If someone writes clean, well-structured code, AI can accelerate them. If someone writes spaghetti, AI just helps them write it faster. AI doesn't fix fundamentals. It amplifies them. And that's widening the gap inside teams, not closing it. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The gap AI won’t close
Why equal access to AI tools is creating unequal outcomes in engineering teams
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
"Create a caricature based on everything you know about me." People are celebrating how accurately AI can profile them and nobody finds that strange... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The data you were delighted to give away
How viral AI trends became the most successful data collection strategy ever invented
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
You write something useful, AI trains on it, six months later it gives someone your answer with zero attribution and zero traffic back. The open web ran on: create value, get found, benefit. AI runs on: create value, never get found again... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
AI is breaking the open web
AI companies are consuming the open web while destroying the reasons people contribute to it
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Looks like Microsoft have just launched a new Inclusive Design website which has been built through co‑design with disabled and neurodivergent collaborators, the new experience focuses on adaptability, usability, and real‑world inclusion... 😍 inclusive.microsoft.design
inclusive.microsoft.design
Microsoft Inclusive Design
Microsoft Inclusive Design is a practice that anyone who creates and manages products and services can use to build more inclusive experiences for everyone. Get the principles, guidebooks, workshop to...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
If you're leading a team or function: how do you know people are telling you the truth? Not in theory. Not because you have an open-door policy. In practice. In the actual moments when you propose something that won't work... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The honesty problem in engineering
Why the people around you have stopped telling you the truth
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Sharing this because I think Buttered Crumpet is the best typeface name ever, and also because Wallace and Gromit are awesome.... 😊 jamieclarketype.com/case-study/w...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Radio buttons are built into browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another library to rebuild them? How did a native browser control become this complicated? 😢 paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shad...
paulmakeswebsites.com
The Incredible Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button
Radio buttons are built into web browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another UI library that rebuilds radio buttons from scratch? Why does rendering a radio button require multiple depe...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Trying to keep up with AI is exhausting... medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
AI fatigue and the cost of keeping up
Why the pace of AI change isn’t sustainable
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Why do we keep deferring to whoever sounds most certain in technical decisions? Why does admitting "I don't know" look like weakness instead of intellectual honesty? And what are we teaching every engineer who's watching this play out? medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The technical leadership problem in engineering
Why the people making your technical decisions are optimised for confidence, not competence
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Seventeen men walk into a ski resort and write a manifesto about human-centred development. Twenty-five years later we're still blaming teams when it doesn't work. Still sending people on scrum master courses. Still pretending the problem is the people, not the framework. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The Agile problem in engineering
Why a methodology designed by one demographic doesn’t work for everyone
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
My creation for this weeks @codepen.io challenge, something that evokes a feeling of wintertime coziness. There is nowhere I would rather be in the middle of Winter than curled up with a good book and a cup of tea...! 📖 🤎 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...
codepen.io
CodePenChallenge: Cozy Winter
...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
CSS Wrapped 2025 has dropped! 🥳 It’s the annual recap of all things CSS and Web UI that landed in Chrome over the last year. This year was massive, 22 new features made it into the browser to help us build beautiful and better UIs…. 🫶 chrome.dev/css-wrapped-...
chrome.dev
CSS Wrapped 2025
Sculpt dynamic interfaces, stretch your imagination, and play with these 22 powerful new CSS features that landed in Chrome this year.
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
We don't talk about the fact that every time you ask ChatGPT to write a poem about your cat, you're contributing to a climate crisis we all claim to care about solving. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The impact of AI nobody’s counting
What clicking ‘generate’ costs the planet
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Technical interviews filter for people who are good at technical interviews, not people who are good at engineering. We all know this, but we keep doing it anyway. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The technical interview problem in engineering
Why we keep using a hiring process we know doesn’t work
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
This is very cool!!! It's a CSS terrain generator that leverages stacked grids and 3D transforms. Apparently inspired by Transport Tycoon, Sim City and other '90s isometrics classics, it's built with Vue and Nuxt 😍 terra.layoutit.com
terra.layoutit.com
Layoutit Terra - CSS Terrain Generator
An interactive CSS terrain generator. Define a grid and generate your terrain!
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
A little bit of fun for this weeks @codepen.io challenge using CSS shape() and corner-shape, a random kaleidoscope generator... 🥰 💠 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...
codepen.io
CodePen Challenge: CSS Shape
...
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
We tell ourselves we're optimising. Making things more efficient, more scalable. But what we're actually doing is quietly redesigning human work to fit AI's limitations one "optimisation" at a time. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Are we adapting AI to humans, or humans to AI?
Why we’re bending ourselves to fit the machine instead of the other way around
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Measuring productivity makes everyone less productive. We optimise for what gets counted, and the work becomes producing metrics. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The productivity problem in engineering
Why measuring productivity makes everyone less productive
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
When you start with "we need to use AI" and work backwards to find problems, you're not solving technical challenges. You're avoiding uncomfortable conversations about what you're actually trying to accomplish. The hard part isn't building AI, it's knowing when not to. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Why AI is a people problem, not a technical problem
We keep looking for problems to fit our AI solutions into, then wondering why nobody uses what we build
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
We're practising how to talk to something that never challenges us, never misunderstands us, never requires us to deal with messy human communication. The more we practice that, the worse we get at the real thing. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Why talking to AI might be making us lonelier
How AI conversations are replacing human connection without us noticing
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
AI uses more confident language when it's making things up than when it's actually right. We're dealing with pattern-matching systems that don't know when they don't know something. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Are we too quick to trust the output of AI?
Why the most convincing AI outputs might be the most dangerous
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Reposted by Gemma Croad
Sarah Drasner @sarahedo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
💥 did a small drawing explaining the JS execution model including the event loop. I hope it’s helpful to folks. Debugging is always easier when the underlying implementations are understood.
Drawing explaining the JS execution model and event loop
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
I created this vintage colour theory poster for this weeks @codepen.io challenge! It's a loving tribute to those beautiful scientific colour wheel prints I was obsessed with as a child (and honestly still am)... 🥰 🌈 codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...
codepen.io
CodePen Challenge: Color Wheel
A bit of a nod to the vintage style colour wheels I used to love as a child, and still do....
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
"Culture fit" in tech hiring often means "doesn't make us uncomfortable by questioning how we do things." But what if the person who doesn't quite fit is exactly what your team needs? medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The culture fit problem in engineering
Why the person who doesn’t quite fit is exactly what your team needs
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
There's something bothering me about engineering promotions. We assume good coders automatically make good leaders. Spoiler: it doesn't work that way. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The promotion problem in engineering
Why technical excellence doesn’t automatically make someone a good leader, and what happens when we pretend it does
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Searched for banana bread recipes lately? You'll find "The Ultimate Guide to Perfect Banana Bread: 15 Amazing Variations" written by a system that can't actually taste, touch, or try anything. This is AI slop. And it's breaking how we learn from each other. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Why AI slop matters more than you think
How generated content is drowning out human voices online
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
This is a bit of a stroll down memory lane bradfrost.com/blog/post/th...
bradfrost.com
The History of Themeable User Interfaces
A full-ish history of user interfaces that can be themed to meet the opportunities and constraints of the time
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
“Why do we need all these engineers when AI can just… write the code for us?” Because engineering is mostly not coding. It's figuring out what you're actually trying to build and why. medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
Why engineering isn’t just coding (and AI won’t change that)
Why business leaders misunderstand what engineers actually do, and how that impacts AI adoption
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
The tech industry promises AI will free us up for more creative work. But what happens when we outsource creativity itself? I’m curious to hear your thoughts, especially if you work in a creative field. How are you thinking about this balance? medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The human spark and why we shouldn’t outsource our creativity
Creativity is at the heart of what it means to be human, yet many in the tech industry are trying to convince us to outsource that spark to…
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
How is your organisation thinking about the intersection of design systems and AI? I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I'd love to chat if this is the space you're working in 🙂 medium.com/@gemma.croad...
medium.com
The Future of Design Systems: Shipping Intelligence Rather Than Code
Are traditional design systems becoming AI constraint systems? Maybe the real value isn’t in pre-built components anymore, maybe it’s in…
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Thought for the afternoon: Are traditional design systems becoming AI constraint systems? Potentially the real value isn't in pre-built components anymore, maybe it's in the systematic knowledge about how things should work together? 🤔
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Gemma Croad @gemmacroad.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
I just read “In Praise of Normal Engineers” by Charity Majors' and it’s a refreshing take on the “10x engineer” myth. TL;DR: It’s not about unicorn individuals, it’s about building 10x teams where normal, everyday engineers can thrive, ship, and make real impact... 🙌 charity.wtf/2025/06/19/i...
charity.wtf
In Praise of “Normal” Engineers
This article was originally commissioned by Luca Rossi (paywalled) for refactoring.fm, on February 11th, 2025. Luca edited a version of it that emphasized the importance of building “10x engi…
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