The front-end world can be riddled with problems that seek out the best in us at times and occasionally bring out maddening frustration. But nonetheless we are expected to prevail even when the increasingly odds grow against us. For a lucky few these challenges become an opportunity to develop a sense of engineering maturity. One such challenge is the ever changing landscape of web page optimization. The challenge is really about solving a cluster of micro-problems, some easily resolvable and others perplexing. And if you are familiar with web page optimization then you are probably aware that the ecosystem has evolved and has become critical to a website’s success. When I first started developing websites I thought my responsibilities ended with HTML, CSS and Javascript. There was occasional talk about performance but no concrete guidelines at the time, then came Google PageSpeed. With the simple action of copy, paste and click you could get a detailed analysis of game changing performance recommendations. To my surprise most of them were way beyond my skill set…at the time. The result was a letter grade which stuck in my mind and developed into an obsession.