# note Published articles for note. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## System Administrator Appreciation Day and why we keep our skills in-house DevFeed: [System Administrator Appreciation Day and why we keep our skills in-house]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Luke Erlacher Published: 2026-07-28T04:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Fastmail Blog]() Topics: [Platform Engineering](), [Networks](), [Server](), [Internet]() Tags: [engineering](), [meet-our-team](), [network](), [note](), [outages](), [platform-engineering](), [sysadmin](), [triage](), [troubleshoot]() ### AI overview Fastmail highlights its Platform Engineering team on System Administrator Appreciation Day and explains why it keeps platform and networking expertise in-house. The team manages connectivity, DNS, servers, incidents, and outages, helping troubleshoot service problems quickly. ### Source excerpt Fastmail's spin on System Administrator Appreciation Day: highlighting and appreciating our Platform Engineering team. What is System Administrator Appreciation Day? July 31 marks System Administrator Appreciation Day. We all have someone in our life who keeps our personal tech, our home network, maybe our personal website running - or we are that person for our loved ones. At our workplaces, sysadmins in IT departments do the often invisible work of keeping computers, networks, printers, servers, and much more running. System Administrator Appreciation Day is dedicated to taking note and celebrating this important work that keeps the world of tech ticking along smoothly and responding quickly when things get less smooth. System Administrators at Fastmail At Fastmail, the Platform team takes on that role, both for our in-house IT, and for the servers and networks that your email lives on. Like the stereotypical sysadmin, they too are often invisible - they're not responding to support tickets, they're not working on user-facing features, and as long as everything is working, you don't notice their work at all. As a global service linked with hundreds of other email providers, the biggest exposure you get to their work at Fastmail is when there are network issues. We do not delegate reachability and email deliverability to a third party, so we have to manage inbound and outbound connectivity between the internet and our servers, network range blocks, DNS, and many other building blocks of what makes an internet service work. The Platform team is also the first responder for all incidents and outages: Because the platform is the base layer for all services at Fastmail, Platform engineers are best placed to triage incidents and pinpoint where the problem lies. System Administrators and in-house expertise And that is why we keep these skills in-house - because these skills are required so that when something breaks, we can troubleshoot and fix the issue or find a workar ## Escape from Average (#note) DevFeed: [Escape from Average (#note)]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Stefan Judis Published: 2026-07-10T22:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stefan Judis Web Development]() Topics: [JavaScript]() Tags: [ai](), [career](), [developer](), [javascript](), [note](), [team]() ### AI overview A short commentary on a statement from Wilto's "JavaScript for Everyone" course. It argues that developers, teams, and the web stagnate without a deep understanding of their output and continued craft improvement. ### Source excerpt Wilto is working on extending his "JavaScript for Everyone" course, and I love this statement: If you don't have a deep understanding of your output, the best result you can hope for is "average" -- the best you can hope to be, as a developer, is "average." If you're not honing your craft, you stagnate. So does your team. So do your wages. So does the web. I still want to be believe that aiming to be better is a valuable career approach, but we'll find out because from what I see "average" is good enough for most people, companies, and jobs. I hope we'll escape from average. Reply to Stefan ## Notes on relying on the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (#note) DevFeed: [Notes on relying on the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (#note)]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Stefan Judis Published: 2026-02-18T23:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stefan Judis Web Development]() Topics: [Accessibility](), [aria](), [User interface design](), [Design system]() Tags: [accessibility](), [aria](), [design-system](), [guide](), [llm](), [note](), [practices]() ### AI overview The article examines reliance on the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide, arguing that it demonstrates ARIA capabilities and usage patterns but should not be treated as a pattern library, design system, or definitive source for accessible implementation. It emphasizes that accessibility can vary across browser and screen-reader combinations. ### Source excerpt Eric wrote about how to instruct an LLM to fetch the "valuable stuff" from the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG). The article includes some points about APG itself that are worth highlighting. And what's the valuable stuff? If you don't know the Authoring Practice Guide, here's what you'll see after finding it online looking for ARIA patterns. As you see above, the guide is supposed to teach how to use accessibility semantics defined by the Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA). And it looks very authoritative. When I first discovered it after some googling, I treated this guide as the source of truth because it lives under w3.org and looks very official. I learned early on that using ARIA correctly is hard; and thought that APG must be the place showing me how to do ARIA correctly. It sort of is but not really. Lately, I've seen many accessibility folks raise concerns about APG, and Eric's article echoes some of them. The APG was created to demonstrate ARIA's capabilities. Because of this, it disproportionately favors ARIA in its code examples. The guide is there to showcase ARIA usage patterns and if people want to showcase something they might overuse it at times. This is true for ARIA usage in the APG, too. The APG was also not created to serve as a pattern library, design system, or single source of truth for the "right way" to make something. Unfortunately, a lot of people treat it this way. I understand Eric's point, but I also can't blame people for treating the guide as "the right way". The home page literally says that "APG provides design patterns and functional examples". It's hosted on w3.org. It looks very official. If there's a line between "a collection of design patterns" and a "pattern library" at all, it's a very thin one. Of course people treat the Authoring Practice Guide as the right way to do things -- when I discovered it, I did, too. Recall here that the original reason for APG code is to be a showpiece for how ARIA could hypothetica