Stripe Press
press.stripe.com
press.stripe.com
They focus their issues on different engineering topics: May 2021 was "Containers," August 2020 was "APIs," Feb 2019 was "Internationalization," you get the idea. Can't recommend it enough. Worth scrolling through the topics to one that hits close to your interests.
Nearest to my own heart is the "Frontend" issue [2] -- every article is fucking fascinating, and one of my favorites is a deep dive from Evan You, the author of Vue, about the decision to do a full rewrite for Vue 3.
I am endlessly impressed by the quality of writing that comes out of Stripe.
I also love Increment dearly. In case you missed it, the recent Mobile issue was the penultimate issue.
https://mobile.twitter.com/IncrementMag/status/1432799936488...
Nooo :( I'm glad they will do the collector box tho, I think I will take one!
I assume this thoughtfulness matriculates down the organization where these high quality write ups originate.
Kagan takes issue with Thucydides' view that the war was inevitable, that the rise of the Athenian Empire in a world with an existing rival power made a clash between the two a certainty. """
That's impressive. People pay too little attention to the matrix that's been popping out copies all these centuries.
We need more long form and high quality publications.
I posit a stack consisting of Substack posts, quality magazines, academic papers as the optimum knowledge supply.
Why does Stripe, a financial services company, continue having the most interesting UI on the web? Those sexy svg gradient backgrounds, those color palletes that go together so well that I don't see anywhere else, every logo and every icon and every font choice so thoroughly thought out. What attracts UI/UX talent of this caliber to Stripe?
I think there are a few possible definitions for the word ‘boring’
1. Things you can’t talk about at an ordinary dinner party—math is boring
2. Things that are mundane or pedestrian—checkout at a supermarket is boring
3. Things that are simple but tedious—transferring your contacts from your Rolodex to your mobile telephone is boring
I think that because some definitions apply to stripe for the user or developer (definition 2, probably 1) it is easy to assume that definition 3 applies to the front end or the system as a whole. And surely it is a success of stripe to make their business look so trivial that people assume it is trivial. But I don’t really think that’s true.
Obviously without the money incentive said virtuous circle could break down in an instant.
Attention to Details matters. Taste Matters. Unfortunately it is not something money can buy.
(There is proof that significant financial resources aren't needed to do great work in a lot of personal websites. Most recent example I came across: https://bruno-simon.com.)
Thanks for posting this.
I've been at a company that many considered to have excellent design and that received a lot of attention here (Heroku). There was a culture that permeated the company around beautiful design and what I would call "maker excellence". It was a place where people who liked building great things (both engineers and designers) felt at home.
I totally understand the need to be a bit less "opinionated" as you expand your audience, but they were definitely memorable.
"""
No, designers aren't crazy. You just don't understand a very fundamental concept of design. It even applies to engineering. It's okay—many people have the same frustrations as you do.
But those who care about the details achieve truly high quality results overall. It extends to all areas of the design, not just to the parts you can't see.
In the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," there's a scene in a dark room where Roger Rabbit (an animated character) flies across the room, knocks a hanging lamp around, and the lighting becomes so dynamic that all the shadows move around including the animated character's shadow. Here's the scene in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUPwsD64GI
This was such a small detail that it would have been forgivable if the animators had left it out entirely: if they had not moved the lamp, kept the shadow steady, no one would have really noticed the difference. It would have been 100 times easier to animate and the effect wouldn't really have been that different.
But they did it anyway. The term was later coined, and "bump the lamp" is used throughout Disney (and probably other organizations) to mean something akin to "go the extra mile"—but I see it as having a special significance to design.
You're right, most people won't notice. By that logic, you could cut corners a lot of other places too. You could be lax about button colors matching exactly, or per-pixel sharpness on the map and buttons. No one would probably notice.
But if you go for every detail like it was the most important detail, you have the possibility of reaching a level of design quality that is superlative, and some people will notice. Others will not notice directly, but will see that the piece exudes style and quality subconsciously, due to the attention to small details. If you carry this into other areas of your work—programming, customer service, market strategy, marketing, and more—then you have a chance to create something of true quality.
If you don't pay attention to detail at that level, well, you might have the chance to actually get something done. Yes, it's a balance, like everything else. But you have to know that it won't be quite as good, and understand that yes, you are sacrificing something, even if you can't see it.
"""
In the same way, Stripe creates a superlative product and branding site, and in the mere act of doing so, it attracts those who also wish to create such products. It may seem high effort for those who may not seem to care, but for those who do, they immediately understand the value.
I do find it sexy and bedazzling but that’s exactly why it is not interesting to me. Also Stripe’s taste is copied en-made to the point where it has become a self-propelling cliche in design. A good problem to have I suppose!
From what I've seen and used - Stripe also focuses big on usability and it appears also focuses heavily on developer experience.
What sites do you prefer that align more with the uber-functionalism lens?
I personally was annoyed that I couldn't open the books.
And rendering books in 3D is nothing more than a visual gimmick, not really a UI in any way.
It also reeks of skeomorphism which is nothing new and was certainly not invented by Stripe.
If Amazon presented their book catalogue like this, users would walk away. And to test this statement, let's see if Amazon copies this (I bet not).
Also, the messages they send to the webhooks are not really that well documented. You never know 100% what actually happened. E.g. low funds isn't the same thing as a payment card limit, but Stripe send the same message for both. The second is usually easy for the user to fix, the first one can be tough one. You cannot help the user as you just have no idea what is happening - so you usually don't make the sale and who knows if the person will return. Testing things like subscription renewal is quite wasteful of developer time, you have to actually wait for stuff to happen and it can take an hour. Downloading receipts as PDF is done by parsing an HTML page - there really could've been an API endpoint for that. The Stripe CLI seems to only show so many items e.g. when creating products and prices. I haven't discovered an option to load more/ all/ a concrete number of these items. If it is present, it isn't easily discoverable when actually using the tool or reading the included help. The documentation usually stops exactly at the point, where you would like to see a concrete implementation of things. Like what events do you actually need to handle and what do they mean exactly?
Oh and did I tell you about that time, when the support staff lied to our CEO about the support of USD accounts outside of the US/ Canada? No, it isn't possible to have funds transferred to a USD bank account created e.g. in Europe because you don't get a routing number there. The documentation on the website is correct, the support staff provided a false answer when asked absolutely specifically to clarify because it really isn't all that clear if you are setting things up.
All these things just make you angry, when you see the supposedly "polished" UI and then spend extra days or weeks handling situations that could've been handled from the get go by Stripe so no developer has to go through the pain. So the UI/ UX design and the overall style of communication seems to be quite shallow and disconnected from the real needs of customers be it developers or people buying stuff. Don't get me wrong, Stripe is probably better than the average other financial institution and there are very hard-working people doing great engineering work at Stripe. It just all seems so 80% and that is much too short of the "really good" feel that would be actually polished.
There is a different book also called "The Big Score"[0] (not the one put out by Stripe Press), that is about a mining billionaire, Robert Friedland. He was Steve Jobs' roommate in college, it's alleged that some of Friedland's charisma rubbed off on Jobs. Interesting book for people who want to read about how startups work in the mining industry.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Score-Robert-Friedland-Voiseys/dp...
I highly recommend the book because it really is a beautiful object, but if your eyesight ain't what it used to be, read it on your Kindle. Either way, read it. I'm pretty sure if you like HN, you will enjoy the book.
The book gave me a sense of purpose and belonging in the 'computer industry'. Software and the internet were already magical to me. After reading the Dream Machine, even more so.
Learning about computing pioneers' vision for what could be has kept me motivated to learn and one day contribute to humanity's greatest endeavor.
Stripe Press - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17551687 - July 2018 (131 comments)
It's perhaps not the easiest to navigate that way, but that's a complaint that could be levied in browsers with javascript and renderings as well.
Now that would have been really cool.
'The book is about how social-media-connected masses are revolting against elites, but the revolt has moved forward so quickly that a lot of what Gurri considers wild speculation is now obvious fact. I picked up the book on its "accurately predicted the present moment" cred, but it predicted the present moment so accurately that it's barely worth reading anymore. It might as well just say "open your eyes and look around".'
[0]https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-revolt...
1 - Term taken from an earlier (and classic) essay of his: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
Thank you so much for publishing/producing/making (?) 'We are as Gods' – I had of course read 'From Counter-Culture to Cyberculture' and 'What the Dormouse said' but not yet seen the movie.
Learning about Stewart Brand's history helped me better understand and appreciate my personal story and my relationship with systems. I have an original 1969 Whole Earth Catalog! It's one of my most treasured possessions :D
Wouldn't mind seeing a similar type of curated release from First Round(1) who also releases great info for anyone working or founding startups.
E.g. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Will-Larson/dp/1732265186, 46.70 euros against $23 on amazon.com!
For folks who know any react I'd recommend react-three-fiber [1] as your entrypoint. It's ridiculously easy to get started. The creator (mlsarecmg on HN, I think), just came out with this tutorial today for beginners: https://twitter.com/0xca0a/status/1445409346305892353
It's paid but there's nearly endless free content as well between his twitter, the pmndrs discord, and the official docs [2].
I started using R3F and was able to put this [3] together, which is heavily inspired by Stripe design, in a couple weeks with some spare time. That is to say how easy it was and how highly I recommend the pmndrs suite for web 3D abstractions.
[1] https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber [2] https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/getting-started/intro... [3] https://r3f-gradient.netlify.app/