On Dependency

Nearly three years on, this piece from Rob still resonates deeply with me.

I have no illusions about being some kind of lone wolf. All the stuff I’m making “by hand”—the way it approaches form, function, and materials—has been informed by philosophies and techniques developed by an amorphous community that spans generations. This work proliferates through byzantine open source projects, yes, but it also proliferates through books, blog posts, and videos with titles like “Custom Styling Form Inputs With Modern CSS Features.” When I’m making things, that’s how I prefer to depend on others and have them depend on me: by sharing strong, simple ideas as a collective, and recombining them in novel ways with rigorous specificity as individuals.