Social Proof: How Popularity Shapes What We Believe and Do
You’ve walked into a crowded restaurant or joined a round of applause just because everyone else did. That’s social proof—our instinct to follow the crowd when uncertain. It’s a mental shortcut—often sensible but also easily manipulated.
An Era of Thinking to Unthink
I thought I had my world figured out, my go-to playbook and shelf of experience. But in this era, we get humbled. Progress sometimes depends not on learning more, but on unlearning what we already know, as the rules get rewritten overnight.
Liking: Why Affection Shapes Our Choices
You have said yes because you liked who asked. You bought an overpriced chocolate bar or scented candle with a smile and a ‘no trouble at all.’ That pull beyond the product is the power of liking. It feels good, but Cialdini shows how it can be engineered.
The Messy Reality of Cross-Functional Teams
Teams aren’t machines; they’re ecosystems. The real work lives at the messy overlaps. Influence beats title, async beats ceremony, and AI handles grunt work. Strong teams trade comfort for clarity, build trust in layers, and ship from shared context.
Reciprocation: The Secret Power Behind Human Obligations
How the Give-and-Take Principle Shapes Our Choices (and How to Recognize When It’s Being Used Against Us)
Levers of Influence: How We Decide Without Deciding
The moment we believe we are firmly in charge, subtle triggers begin shaping our thoughts and actions. We can be nudged by price tags, gentle language, or signals of authority. Cialdini calls these levers of influence. They often steer us before we even realize it.
What “use client” Really Does in React and Next.js
React’s use client directive might look like a simple annotation at the top of your file, but it marks a shift in how we structure apps. It opens a gateway between server and client environments. Dan Abramov even likened its importance to async / await or structured programming.
The Cost of Switching Frameworks Every Year That No One Wants to Admit
Frontend development moves fast. Every few months a new framework entices us. We rebuild our app in React, then Vue, then Svelte or Solid. Yet beneath the fun of chasing the newest, there are hidden costs—technical overhead, morale hits, loss of institutional knowledge, hiring headaches.
ESM vs CommonJS: History, Differences, and the Big Shift
You’ve likely seen multiple JavaScript module systems. Node.js built on CommonJS with require and module.exports. Browsers adopted ES modules using import and export. Today the ecosystem is shifting toward ESM, but CommonJS still holds strong in many projects.
Unless the Lord Builds the House: Finding God in a Tech Dad’s Busy Life
It’s Sunday morning, 9:30 AM. We should have left the house ten minutes ago. Instead, I’m frantically tying shoelaces, fielding a debate…
Why You Should Avoid Using Server Actions for Data Fetching in Next.js 15
Next.js’s Server Actions make it easy to call server code directly from components via POST requests. They work great for mutations like form submissions or database writes. But using them for data fetching can hurt performance and complicate caching and concurrency.
How do we decide how to solve a problem?
In software development we encounter many problems daily—from UI glitches to architecture issues. A clear, precise definition lets us choose the right path. Then we set evaluation criteria, explore options, prototype, iterate based on feedback, and document our decisions.
