What Makes a Senior Developer Senior?
Seniority isn’t a title. It’s how you work when it counts: choose the boring tool when it wins, ship with guardrails, teach without theater, cut complexity, and own outcomes after merge. Tradeoffs over tricks. Clarity over clever. Spotlight traded for team lift.
Should We Scale?
Nobody buys your Kubernetes story. They buy relief. Scale only when real demand hurts. Start simple, fix hot paths, and climb one rung at a time. Complexity is a cost, not a badge. Build for today. Earn microservices later.
The Real Bug Is in Your Brain
The hardest bugs are not in your repo but in your reasoning. Confirmation, optimism, anchoring, availability, and Dunning-Kruger warp decisions. Fight back with disconfirming tests, independent estimates, broader hypotheses, and KISS. Debug your mind first.
TypeScript Soup: Taming an Unruly API
One tiny helper, big payoff. Use template literal types to infer base fields from `nameFr` style keys, then `getLocalized(locale, obj, fields)` returns exactly what you asked for. No copy-paste, no string concat, typos blocked, locales centralized, fallbacks handled.
Second-System Syndrome in Software
Successful V1s tempt teams into bloated V2s. From Netscape 6 and Vista to Copland, Perl 6/Raku, PHP 6, Python 3, Angular 2, Evernote 10, Skype 2017, and Snapchat 2018—what changed, what broke (tech, product, org), and a checklist to dodge the second-system trap.
No, the Code Doesn’t Speak for Itself
“Self-documenting code” is a comforting lie. Without READMEs, API contracts, and decision logs, you create onboarding hell, brittle integrations, and knowledge silos. Adopt a “just-enough docs” mindset and make documentation part of done.
Vibe Coding Is the New Spaghetti Code
Vibe coding feels like magic: talk and code appears. But the first draft often hides spaghetti. Use it for prototypes, not production. Treat AI like a junior dev. Review, refactor, test, and own the architecture. Speed wins nothing if maintenance loses.
Why Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever in the AI Era
AI can write features fast, but speed without understanding is a trap. Never merge code you cannot explain. Treat AI like a junior: good for drafts, not decisions. Review, test, and refactor. Fundamentals turn quick wins into systems that stand up under load.
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.
A Year with Next.js Server Actions: Lessons Learned
Server Actions in Next.js let you write server-side code directly in React components, cutting down boilerplate and simplifying client-server communication. They shine for data mutations and UI-tied operations, but require care to avoid tight coupling, overuse, or vendor lock-in.
Slow Down to Move Faster
In software development, speed can be costly. Quick fixes often hide deeper issues, leading to more rework. Slowing down to think deliberately, plan, and explore options may feel slower at first but often produces better solutions, fewer bugs, and stronger long-term results.
