Finding the time to create and post on social media takes time and expertise I don’t have. So I asked AI to do it for me. — I’m a lazy person. Beyond being lazy, I’m also forgetful. That’s a killer combo when it comes to repetitive tasks that I have to do week after week. You may or may not know that I’m a frequent blogger. Over the past 5 years I’ve written over 200 blog posts…

Did you know real-time notifications were more than just WebSockets? You have plenty of options based on your use case — I’ve been spending a lot of time lately exploring the world of real-time notifications. Naively, I was under the impression that real-time communication meant one thing: WebSockets. More specifically, I thought the term for server-to-browser communication was “WebSocket.” I thought this for years! I even wrote a five-part series on…

How often do you generative AI to write your code? What about writing your tests? You might be doing it backwards. — Unit tests are the worst. Don’t get me wrong, they are an invaluable part of any CI pipeline or automation. But man are they a pain to write. Most developers I know, myself included, like to dive straight into code and would love to hand it over as soon as…

It’s time we stop the old code-first or spec-first debate — Many application developers are API builders in one way or another. Whether they are building APIs for third-party integrators, user interfaces, or as part of a platform engineering team, we have significantly more exposure to APIs than we realize. As a consumer of an API, I hate it when documentation…

Is your API defined with an Open API Spec? Good news! You can turn that into an event-driven engine in your CI pipeline — There’s no doubt that the world has gone async. People no longer wait at loading screens for 30 minutes while their task completes behind the scenes. We’ve figured out how to make delightful experiences that make end users more productive while other things are going on. We know how to…

Get instant access to a low-latency, auto-scaling web server directly from your browser. — I’ve never been much of a front-end developer. Throughout my career my focus has been on the backend. I like designing systems, building data models, and choreographing event-driven workflows. It’s a satisfying set of problems that have challenged me since I graduated college.‍ But when I started working at Momento…

Auth is hard enough as it is. Be sure you understand the difference between two primary modes of authentication: API keys and tokens. — They say the two hardest problems in computer science are cache invalidation and naming things. Honestly, that’s not wrong. Those are super hard.‍ What makes naming things difficult is being clear yet concise. There should be no doubt about the meaning of a variable, term, function, or class. If you…

Starting a SaaS app and need to set your users up with premium features? Here’s how to get started. — Earlier this year I released an AI-powered fitness app focused on creating tailored workouts using equipment you have at your disposal. It was pretty good, but inadvertently was geared toward how I exercise. Not great for general usage. So I completely rewrote it for a hackathon. I took the best…

Get your audience engaged with emoji reactions in real-time! — Have you ever given an in-person presentation? As you talk, you look around the room and see heads nodding or people taking notes. Maybe someone raises their hand and asks a question about something you said. It’s easier to get engagement from someone when you can see them directly. But…