On August 12, 2026, I deleted 30 blog posts from this site in one commit. The commit message says "Remove outdated articles on UI design and loading states."
That message isn't really the truth, because most of them weren't outdated. Tabular numbers still work the same way.
The numbers made it harder
Here's what makes this strange. Writing them worked.
The tweet saying "wrote some blogs." with a link to my site got 770 likes and over 28,000 views. It's the second most liked thing I've ever posted, out of the 580 original posts I have data for.
So people liked them, and I deleted them anyway.
Could someone else have written this?
Here's what I'd put on the table. These are all 30 titles.
- Accessible by default is easier than accessible by audit
- The browser is part of the design toolchain
- Cleaner Next.js imports
- Design QA before pull request
- Design systems are decision systems
- Design to code is a skill
- Empty states that actually help users
- Every component needs a stress test
- Get browser default font size
- Hidden design work in form validation
- A skeleton, a spinner, or nothing at all
- How to think like a design engineer
- Identify the element causing overflow
- Micro-interactions that matter
- Optimistic UI without the lies
- Pixel perfect is the wrong goal
- Polish vs decoration
- Progressive blur
- Scroll-driven animations without JavaScript
- Spacing systems that make interfaces feel calmer
- Stop using useEffect for everything
- Tabular numbers
- Test with ugly data
- The button is not done when it looks done
- The inert attribute
- URL badge 2-fold truncation
- What designers mean by "this feels off"
- Button labels shouldn't change width while loading
- Why most loading states feel fake
- Why your dashboard feels heavy
They're fine. "Polish vs decoration" still has a good idea in it. "Tabular numbers" will save you some layout shift. I wouldn't argue with any of them.
And that's the trouble. There's no one in them. Open "Design systems are decision systems" and you'd have no idea that I've actually worked on design systems. It doesn't mention a single client, a single mistake, a single thing that happened. It could have been written by anyone who'd read the same few articles.
Ten posts added in a single commit is about the clearest evidence I could give you. Nobody has ten things to say on one day. You can have ten topics, though.
What I'm doing differently
I've kept one test from this.
The same ideas are fine, and I've reused some. Almost everything I write now is still about polish and systems and states. The difference is that it starts from something that happened.
It also means I can't write as fast. I can't publish ten in a day, because I haven't had ten things happen to me today.
Should you delete yours?
Probably not, honestly. Some of those posts helped people, and there's nothing wrong with a useful tip. Taking them down broke links for nothing, and I didn't even set up redirects.
If I did it again, I'd keep the useful tips and stop calling them essays. What I actually needed to delete was the idea that I had something to say on any topic you could name.
Everything on this site now has to have happened to me first, including this post.