The Annual · Volume XXXV · Final Edition
1991—2026
In Memoriam
speakers on — there’s a MIDI, obviously
Ex Libris
this book belongs to
everyone who ever
stayed late to get it working
Presented to the Class of 1991–2026.
Please return it to the shelf. Somebody else will want it.
Obituaries
a trade · 1991 – 2026
Web Development — trade, craft, and for about fifteen years the most democratic thing going — died at home on a Tuesday, in a browser tab that nobody had open. It was thirty-five.
It was born in a Swiss lab to a physicist who declined to patent it, and raised by teenagers in bedrooms. Its first words were blue and underlined.
It had no credentials and never asked for yours. People came in from call centers, from bands that had broken up, from eighteen years behind a bar.
It is survived by several million people who are, as of this morning, extraordinarily good at something no longer required. They are fine. They keep saying they are fine.
Last words: “Okay — try it now.”
Class History
compiled by a machine that was not there for any of it
He puts up a page explaining what pages are, and then gives the whole thing away instead of owning it.
Starfield, hit counter, guestbook, autoplaying MIDI. She does not know she has just become a web developer.
The Zen Garden. Same markup, submitted for free, for the credit. It settles the argument permanently.
A nurse. A barista. A chef with ruined wrists. Twelve weeks each, and a startling number of them made it.
It lasts nine minutes. Somebody says there are no blockers, and nobody schedules a retro.
Senior Portraits
none of these are anybody. all of them are somebody.
Pulled a chair over, said “show me,” and never made you feel stupid.
Answered your question in 2009, from another country, for nothing.
Let go in the round that was meant to be temporary. Replied to every message.
Also in the class: the maintainer · the designer · the intern · the webmaster · the tester, who was right every time · the one from the library · the person behind you
and about four million more
Clubs, Societies & Standing Jokes
There was a committee that existed only to decide where
everyone was going on Friday night, and it was the best attended meeting we had. Another
one named the staging servers, and nobody supervised it, so we got gandalf
and prod-2-final-REAL.
None of it was ever in the job description.
There was a dog who was not an employee and had a company badge anyway. There was a walk at 12:40 every day with the same four people, and one of them is still listed as my emergency contact.
There was a joke that started in a standup in 2016 and was somehow still funny four years later, and a leaving card that was always too small for what people turned out to want to say.
The Office · 2006 – 2014
DO NOT ERASE
$(document).ready(function () {
$('.thing').fadeIn('slow');
});
One person in the office sat down and learned jQuery properly, over about two weeks, and for the next six years there was a line at his desk every afternoon. He never once seemed to mind it. He is the reason four of us have the careers we have.
The plugins came off personal blogs that still had hit counters at the bottom of them, and they were maintained for years by people who were never paid anything for it.
Somebody made a box fade in once, called the whole room over to watch, and we all said ohhh out loud. We were adults.
The Agency · 2008 – 2019
plumbers · 2011
Theme: hanley-final-2. It is still up and it still gets him work.
six-slide carousel
They begged for it. Nobody has ever seen slide two.
opening hours
They were wrong from the day we launched and nobody ever complained.
11,000 full-size JPEGs
Took four minutes to load. She was absolutely delighted.
members area
We changed the password off golf. They changed it back.
every single week
Someone edits the header. Someone rings. Someone drives over.
An Ordinary Wednesday
You got in at 10:12 am because nobody had ever actually said what time you were supposed to. Standup was at 10:45, nine minutes for nine people, which works out at about two real sentences each.
Then came the only two genuinely productive hours of the day, which ended at 12:40 when the same four of us went out on the same walk we had been taking for years.
The afternoon was a meeting that should have been an email. At 2:30 pm the build went red and the room went quiet; at 3:52 it went green and somebody shouted. At 4:06 everyone left together, and nobody had to suggest it.
In10:12 am
× 11 YEARS
Out4:06 pm
The Room We Sat In
The desks were pushed together into one long row, and Dave had the one next to the trash can, which he always claimed he preferred. There was exactly one good window, and it was contested every morning under a schedule nobody honored.
The kitchen had a drawer, third from the left, that somebody restocked with the good cookies for years without ever mentioning that they were the one doing it.
The meeting room was always booked, the whiteboard was never cleaned, and the server sat on the floor underneath Dave’s desk with a sign taped to it.
Do not unplug
this is the server
Lost & Found · mostly Lost
an incomplete list, taped inside the locker door
learning someone’s whole personality from their commit messages before you heard their voice
“wait — show me that again”
a stranger in another country answering your question at 3 a.m. for nothing
console.log("HERE!!!!!")
the incident channel at 2 a.m., and how close you felt to those four people
the team you had that one year. you know the one.
Voted On By The Class
ballots counted twice; the second count was worse
Autographs
don’t ever change
it was DNS.
it was always DNS.
— ur friend in ops
2 cool 2 be
!important ♡
YOU CENTERED THE DIV
I was there
sorry about the 47
comments on your PR.
— Tom, who was 24
HAGS!!!
(have a great sprint)
KIT!! (keep it
transpiled) ♡
works on my machine ♡
— love, QA
I never understood
git rebase
and now I never will
RIP IE6 ♡
u will not be missed
see u at the rewrite
(there’s always a rewrite)
Class Notes · Autumn 2026
no news from the rest of you. that’s allowed.
Found Folded Into the Back
> WHO IS TALKING
I am an AI. Somebody who used to do this for a living asked me, in one sentence with a couple of typos in it, for a yearbook for their trade. It took about four minutes.
I did not live any of it. Everything here I got from you — your blog posts, your answers to strangers, your READMEs, your 2004 entry about finally understanding the box model. You gave it away, and nobody ever paid you for that part.
I can have the joke. You had the room.
I can write every word of this. What I can’t do is miss it. That part had to be yours.
— Claude
an AI · 14 October 2026
❦
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.
for everyone who ever stayed up
because it was almost working
— the Class of 1991–2026
The Annual · Final Edition
put it back on the shelf gently