Zach Leatherman :11ty:

🫣 Go to my website https://www.zachleat.com/
🎈 Creator/Maintainer of :11ty: @eleventy https://www.11ty.dev/
☁️ Developer Advocate @cloudcannon
🕸️ Front of the front-end web developer
🏳️‍⚧️ Listen to Trans Folks
🌍 Keep Building for the Web
🍎 Nouns, Pro-: he/him/they
🔎 #searchable

Public Key

npub12xmxkh2x3tse6n0wfllpnmzjp2pfcs2a2rk3q4nxhfesxy8kgads7c4sx6

NIP-05 Address

zachleat_at_fediverse.zachleat.com@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9rdntt4rg4cvafhhyllsea3fq4q5ug9w4pmgs2ent5ucrzrmywkccxr7fz

Author Public Key

npub12xmxkh2x3tse6n0wfllpnmzjp2pfcs2a2rk3q4nxhfesxy8kgads7c4sx6

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Last Notes

2025-06-01 01:11:33

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@nprofile…9k0n @nprofile…43g2 I mean, I would definitely watch that

2025-05-07 13:22:08

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some of you are already saying “but the calculator isn’t even accurate” and look — it just has to be right more than me, a broken clock

2025-05-07 13:14:00

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why should I learn math when I can pay a subscription fee for this calculator for the rest of my life

2025-05-07 13:07:14

“if a calculator can do math for me, why should I learn math?” is something you’ll hear children, under-educated adults, and AI proponents say

2025-04-04 20:58:08

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@nprofile…wygr ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for hummus

2025-04-04 14:05:52

I’m very thankful for this place.

2025-04-01 13:24:28

tech companies haven’t earned an april fools’ day this year, sorry everyone

2025-03-27 13:46:00

which web sites did the FBI warn us about? wrong answers only
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/234/680/897/263/229/original/c4f05715c94a61b2.png

2025-03-25 20:08:35

bribecoding is a new phenomenon where you pay open source developers a living wage to work on projects that your business uses

2025-03-19 18:39:25

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@nprofile…fzqg @nprofile…cw92 amazing!

2025-03-17 22:08:59

man selling AI claims “90% of code will be written by AI in 3–6 months; 100% in 12 months.“
https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3
set your calendar reminders, folks — and remember that hype is a monetizable asset (in silicon valley)

2025-03-16 23:34:21

let me just say up front that I love Star Trek—but we have to agree that LCARS is not good UI. societal utopia, sure—where are the user interface folks

2025-03-07 16:01:43

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@nprofile…uqmj ah yeah — that’s not accurate! I’ve done that with the 11ty org: https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-organization-settings/managing-default-labels-for-repositories-in-your-organization

2025-03-06 17:06:32

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What I really want are issues to not be Open nor Closed but a third quantum physics style super-positioned state: Limbo

2025-03-06 16:45:22

Seeing Issue Types appear on the GitHub UI https://github.blog/changelog/2025-01-13-evolving-github-issues-public-preview/#organize-your-work-with-issue-types
and I’m left wondering: how is this better than labels? What unique benefit does it offer?

2025-03-04 21:44:13

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@nprofile…054u yeah! I did start with #1 but punted after I couldn’t get the repo’s linter to agree with it 😬 #2 and #3 would make good contributions!

2025-02-27 17:27:02

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@nprofile…054u yeah, I get it — it isn’t an Eleventy plugin per-say but I suppose in my head I was choosing between @11ty/ or @nprofile…4tpe/ and the former made more sense with the fetch and -img use internally.
It’s a gray area — should is-land be under @11ty/?

2025-02-27 16:22:26

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@nprofile…fwpt it isn’t friendly if your HTML has “navigation, ads, and JavaScript” apparently
source: https://llmstxt.org/

2025-02-20 20:35:26

the wordpress admin settings page is *wild*
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/038/121/755/532/636/original/c63899abf3521807.png

2025-01-21 19:48:03

For the record, the creator of the Remix JavaScript framework posted in defense of Elon’s fascist salute yesterday.

2025-01-11 17:45:40

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@nprofile…0le6 lemme 3d print a big sword real quick

2025-01-11 01:57:32

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@nprofile…0le6 it doesn’t require anything from me, you just add it to your profile 😅

2024-12-30 15:31:07

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@nprofile…u0wx yeah! I think the boat is the hello world project the vendor recommended 🏆
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/113/742/488/998/864/448/original/853b35427d90ed83.png

2024-12-30 15:23:55

my partner got me a 3D printer for christmas and it’s the first “magic technology feeling” I’ve had in a very long time—a glimpse at what a star trek replicator might feel like.
any good recommendations for useful or fun prints?

2024-12-19 16:23:15

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@nprofile…uzec eating trash it kind of on-brand for me though—wait what are you saying 😂

2024-12-19 15:06:32

new laptop sticker
(from Kate Ammann at https://kateammann.bigcartel.com/)
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/113/680/090/751/861/021/original/ac4d8cdc950add32.png

2024-11-19 14:42:53

what is the best JavaScript framework? we asked 2000 next.js superfans to find out

2024-11-13 14:04:03

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@npub1804…ut22 whew—the big challenge is *funding* tools in the “boring architecture” category

2024-11-12 18:18:54

For the record, Bluesky can be “worse” than Mastodon (in important ways that we care about) and still be a temporarily valuable place to get folks off of Twitter/X.

2024-10-14 13:56:38

Reasonable people can agree that “trust your eyes” is not a robust nor repeatable nor scalable real-world method of measuring web performance, right?
…right?

2024-10-10 02:56:09

UUP Engine (pronounced double-U-P-Engine)

2024-09-26 17:59:00

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`npm init -y; npm pkg set type="module";` works well enough—thank you @npub1346…8shy!
via https://social.chriswb.dev/@chrisw_b/statuses/01J8QQEH8DT5EWSYY3ZMJPGZ0G

2024-09-26 17:48:18

Is there an easy way to make `npm init -y` add `"type": "module"` to the newly created package.json?

2024-09-24 22:09:32

Slogging through the @npub1z9m…rz2z docs to add ESM examples today 😫

2024-09-24 15:50:05

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@npub1zdm…yka2 (very much agree here but also just want to make sure you have a few options to flex on your healthcare provider if they surprise you with an out of network bill: https://www.cms.gov/nosurprises)

2024-09-19 22:19:35

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@npub1d34…0e3v you’re the absolute best at this, Josh

2024-09-18 15:32:59

finally adding an Eleventy.__SECRET_INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED property

2024-09-17 14:25:46

📮 New post: Open Source Needs to be Financially Symbiotic
https://www.zachleat.com/web/symbiotic-open-source/

2024-09-16 17:07:37

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@npub183l…erjd hi Scott 👋

2024-09-10 14:29:46

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@npub1gvj…vf42 silverlight! 😭

2024-09-10 14:22:49

my javascript analytics tells me that 100% of my visitors have javascript

2024-09-04 19:16:36

why is it called jpeg-XL if the images are smaller

2024-09-03 21:02:49

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@npub1vd2…ks8e no thank you

2024-09-03 20:48:36

2024-08-30 19:41:14

independent of my well-being, rest assured that I am doing my best to ensure that your email never finds me

2024-08-30 19:39:35

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@npub1vd2…ks8e found this, in retrospect 👼
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/113/052/663/902/183/638/original/d101938d1b07d7dd.png

2024-08-30 18:55:18

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Update: looks like my traffic spiked a bit and FaunaDB disabled my account and deleted my data from this project 😅
Glad I didn’t share this approach—I guess extortion is one way to upsell from the free tier :eyeroll:

2024-08-30 13:27:15

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in iceland architecture you must only write in lavascript

2024-08-30 13:24:37

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lots of product managers using waterfall planning in iceland architecture

2024-08-30 13:19:34

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lots of Object.freeze immutability in iceland architecture

2024-08-30 13:11:48

iceland architecture

2024-08-27 15:27:33

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@npub1tr8…w0wq WordPress always needs one more thing to work like it should by default

2024-08-27 14:14:10

Looks like there has been a fair bit of discussion about the architecture of Mastodon previews and “DDoS-ing” web sites:
1️⃣ https://flipboard.social/@coffeegeek/113030436873628885
2️⃣ https://news.itsfoss.com/mastodon-link-problem/
3️⃣ https://kevquirk.com/blog/mastodon-is-ddosing-me
4️⃣ https://michaelnordmeyer.com/on-mastodon-ddosing-sites
While clearly there is room for improvement there, it’s worth noting that Jamstack architecture and static sites sidestep this issue nicely (by making it someone else’s problem 😅).

2024-08-26 23:42:03

ivermectin static regeneration

2024-08-26 14:59:51

I’m going to be speaking at Web Unleashed in Toronto (October 2024)! See you there?
https://fitc.ca/presentation/the-best-and-worst-parts-of-eleventy-now-in-v3/

2024-08-23 22:27:26

Bigger phones are better
Bigger vehicles are better
Even larger language models
Even more JavaScript
Bigger data centers slurping more energy
More servers
More serverless
More
More
More
Excess
We need more

2024-08-08 18:51:36

A web site that is only readable via screen reader.

2024-08-08 14:47:30

When thinking about the “Lottery factor” of an open source project you must take into account the difference between paid and unpaid labor.
I’d argue that 1 paid dev is worth more than 2 unpaid devs. To further complicate things the other side of the coin is that 10 paid devs burning VC runway is worth… you know what—actually I should probably just stop there.

2024-08-07 22:04:00

❌ div soup
✅ div slop

2024-08-07 19:59:53

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@npub1dmp…w6du …yeah. It isn’t just Vercel—a lot of the JS-dev ecosystem is that way. Definitely hurt my career when everything split.

2024-08-06 21:00:24

📮 New blog post:
The Sneaky Costs of Scaling Serverless
https://www.zachleat.com/web/serverless-cost/
Chronicling the *wonderful time* I had migrating the beefy 11ty Screenshots API to a new hosting provider.

2024-08-06 15:03:46

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@npub18y0…dsym clearly she has good taste

2024-08-06 14:40:51

can you believe that there are people out there making huge life decisions without first making a spreadsheet? wild

2024-08-06 14:31:00

Whoa, this is big news: nunjucks4 is an fully-async rewrite/revival of Nunjucks: https://mastodon.social/@jameswragg/112914191470870251

2024-08-05 21:37:26

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I made a little chart comparing how a few different hosts charge for serverless execution time (normalized to hours of usage) and the vCPU default can cost you a lot of unnecessary money if you’re not paying attention!
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/112/911/561/869/725/373/original/c96fd046d4cb0c06.png

2024-08-05 19:03:33

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Looks like the default changed in April of this year: https://vercel.com/changelog/faster-defaults-for-vercel-function-cpu-and-memory

2024-08-05 18:36:38

TIL about Vercel’s Pro Tier:
1 vCPU (default) = 1.72 GB memory
The UX of these calculations feels a bit like a dark pattern to me. Don’t sleep on that GB-Hrs metric.
For example, the 1000 GB-Hrs of included execution time is 581 hours (using 1 vCPU). Overages advertised at $0.18/GB-Hr are $0.31/hour (using 1 vCPU).
Gonna change my stuff there to use 0.6 vCPU (since they’re services, not SSR): https://vercel.com/docs/functions/configuring-functions/memory#setting-your-default-function-memory-/-cpu-size

2024-08-05 16:09:34

https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/112/910/278/670/274/652/original/ba6d1fbc9ee6b9d9.png

2024-08-05 15:45:12

what’s the name for road rage, but on social media

2024-08-04 00:53:22

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@npub1vd2…ks8e to be honest I feel like it’s weird that more folks aren’t complaining about this? seems like a very expensive difference in service offerings

2024-08-04 00:38:46

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A few things here: Vercel’s Edge Network cache is segmented into 18 regions. Further, the cache eviction policy is “best-effort” and assets may be evicted before they’re stale: https://vercel.com/docs/edge-network/caching#limits
I suspect I was getting very few cache hits—not ideal at all for a screenshots service (or any resource intensive serverless function?). I wanted those images to request once and cache for as long as possible.

2024-08-03 18:40:05

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Preliminary comparisons with Netlify, Vercel, and AWS Lambda+Cloudfront suggest that Vercel is *drastically* overcounting serverless invocation amounts. I suppose it’s possible that I misconfigured something but Netlify was like 4h/day, Vercel was 42h/day and this new AWS setup is looking like it’s going to weigh in at 2h/day?
Alarm bells are going off over here.

2024-08-03 13:31:33

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look—did I yolo this to production in the same day that I learned how to do it? yes, yes I did
vercel rewrite -> cloudfront -> api gateway -> aws lambda function is running the 11ty screenshots API now 👀
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/112/898/319/356/255/726/original/003c4ce5f7c18434.png

2024-08-02 23:27:45

Today I learned how to deploy my own serverless function with a heavy caching layer using Amazon’s AWS Lambda (with a Layer for large dependency reuse), an API Gateway, and CloudFront.
I am an enterprise developer now.

2024-08-02 19:32:58

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in the immortal words of steffi graf: have you heard of our sustainability fundraising initiative https://www.11ty.dev/blog/sustainability-fundraising/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqb75RN-9RA

2024-08-02 19:24:22

first marriage proposal because of @npub1z9m…rz2z so you could say things are getting *pretty* serious: https://indieweb.social/@bobmonsour/112893676626086346

2024-08-01 21:21:08

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@npub1xhl…amuh it’s too late to switch horses now 😅

2024-08-01 18:35:23

current status: learning how to deploy a serverless function directly to aws lambda to save money 😅

2024-07-30 16:47:24

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my dog would *never*

2024-07-30 16:36:22

I always lock my computer when I get up from my desk because of the greatest operational security threat facing my workspace: cats walking or sitting on the keyboard

2024-07-29 13:51:08

If we can agree that browser fingerprinting is bad, we should be able to agree that third-party cookies are also bad.
There is consensus amongst browser-makers that fingerprinting is a bad thing, right?
…right?

2024-07-26 15:42:46

Refactoring working JavaScript code to satisfy limitations in TypeScript.
Everything is fine.
I am being productive.
This is productivity.

2024-07-26 13:24:32

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@npub1hce…c5cz in the light of day I am now reluctant to tell you to search "jd vance couch"

2024-07-26 00:40:44

@npub1hce…c5cz is CouchDB gonna weigh in on the JD Vance thing? 🫣

2024-07-25 16:55:11

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I’m not sure how typescript got crowdstrike’d into my list of things to do today

2024-07-25 16:34:46

TypeScript TIL: `compilerOptions.noResolve: true` will also make all of your explicitly listed compilerOptions.types disappear.
So even with `"types": ["node"]` you’ll still get errors that complain about clearly installed types.
> Cannot find name 'process'. Do you need to install type definitions for node? Try `npm i --save-dev @types/node` and then add 'node' to the types field in your tsconfig.
Everything is fine.

2024-07-24 15:56:12

everybody has a plan until they {get punched in the mouth, scale beyond the host’s free tier}

2024-07-23 17:22:33

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I spent time trying to use the phrase bootloaderlicker here but I gave up—someone else can use it 😅

2024-07-23 17:19:50

last week proved that even without a union the computers can still crowdstrike

2024-07-22 18:15:58

Would be nice to have an option in GitHub Issues notification settings to know when a maintainer comments. It would allow subscribing but skip drive-by comments from everyone else.
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/112/831/500/259/428/932/original/aed2b35c968a5c1e.png

2024-07-22 15:03:54

Just stumbled across a 1.2 MB SVG favicon in the wild 😅

2024-07-19 20:57:35

Genuinely upset at the retirement of Google’s URL shortener, goo.gl.
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/
Just to be clear, this will break a large portion of the web for what seems to be a marginal cost savings. So many Google decisions—including the recent sale of Google Domains—have us asking why? Who’s making the decisions over there?

2024-07-19 16:55:31

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@npub1gvj…vf42 the plugin is cross platform

2024-07-19 16:33:38

is anyone interested in trying my new C-00000291*.sys plugin for eleventy

2024-07-19 16:29:23

If your GitHub Actions are failing right now (specifically on Node 22), here are the GitHub issues you may be interested in subscribing to:
https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/7672
https://github.com/actions/setup-node/issues/1112
https://github.com/actions/node-versions/pull/182

2024-07-19 13:05:54

why can’t chatgpt just fix it

2024-07-18 18:07:53

here’s a good idea that I think should exist:
a job board for non-react front end jobs

2024-07-18 14:20:23

just read some feedback that the 11ty docs need “more foreplay” and my dear friend let me tell you about the miracle of touching grass

2024-07-17 14:01:57

There are incredible parallels between the failure modes of smart home technology and modern web site architecture:
When the power goes out 🤝 When JavaScript fails
My smart lock failed and I’m locked out of my house 🤝 This form button doesn’t submit
The company went out of business and now this {smart device 🤝 JavaScript framework} isn’t receiving updates and poses a security risk

2024-07-16 13:51:59

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@npub1xl7…ss7c what a lovely surprise to see this launch! Appreciate you mentioning the sustainability push too! 🙌