First question is „who are you building for“,
second question is „what do they want?“
Third question is „what is the bare minimum needed to fulfill the want for the persona“
Then you get it in front of them
Then you solicit feedback and refine
RenderATL day one was rough! Up all night with a stomach bug, and finally rolled in about 30 minutes ago.
If you’re still here today, holler at me!
I went to the airport a few hours early specifically to check out the lounge. The lounge is closed, I got full body scanned, and my bag was checked for explosives.
Off to a good start.
RenderATL, here I come!
One thing that I love about Buffalo is that there's basically a 3-degrees-of-separation for most anyone in the city.
I've seen the same people over and over at various events, and it's an awesome way to make better, deeper connections.
Vibe coding is like having a super intelligent developer at your side who's dump stat is wisdom.
How can you tell I used AI to write this code?
Because there are comments
Also, proof of working on my side project 🤫🫨
I gotta admit. I’m hooked on that notification bubble on social media.
Haven’t felt that brain chemical dump since high school.
Not sure how I feel about it.
RenderATL 2025 tickets purchased!
Stoked to reconnect with some old friends and make so many more new ones.
We're gonna have a good ass time :D If you're going be sure to let me know so that we can coordinate a group photo!
One of my weaknesses is putting of 10 minute tasks for DAYS
There is no need and, honestly, my life would be better if I just did the damn thing.
😤😫😣
For my birthday, I got to see an NHL game. They’re always really fun and it make me want to get season tickets.
Shoutout to my buddy Nate for going with me!
Sabers V Ducks - was 0-2 Ducks going into the 3rd period, but the Sabers came back strong ending the game 3-2 Sabers.
I love hockey <3
Why do you need a passion project?
Many reasons, some of which are:
- keeps you consistent
- motivates you to push though obstacles
- is something that you’re personally interested in
- gives you a sandbox to play in
- lets you explore curiosities, try out new things, and mess up sans judgement
Fun Fact Wednesday!
You'll be surprised by the number of applications which allow for two interesting shortcuts:
- `ctrl + n` == next choice
- `ctrl + p` == previous choice
Arc, Discord, Alfred, Chrome, and many more
Feel the speed!
You could sword fight with the icicles coming off my roof. They’re bigger around than my wrist!
First Buffalo Code & Coffee is on the books!
Huge shoutout to those who made is possible - @theradr.bsky.social for the idea, Steve Chen for execution, and Zack Glink for spreading the word.
Definitely going to be doing this again soon!
If you're in the Buffalo or WNY area, come meet with us!
I love seeing engineers dismiss AI as "not ready."
Every dev who refuses to adapt is choosing stagnation, self-selecting out of the future of engineering.
AI isn’t perfect—neither were compilers or cloud computing at first. Those who embrace it will shape what’s next.
The rest? Left behind.
and I just added another one, which was sparked from one of the talks at #CommitYourCode
```
alias vz="nvim ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc"
```
To automatically source your shell rc file after you edit it.
SO good!
Fellow engineers!
Hit me with your favorite or most used aliases!
I'm looking for good ones to add to my arsenal :D
Here is one of my most used:
```sh
alias j="jq '.scripts' package.json"
```
This uses the jq package to list all the "scripts" in a package json file to the terminal.
Yesterday marked my 12th day on Duolingo! It felt long, but I’ve learned a lot:
Understanding reading ≠ understanding speech.
Understanding speech ≠ forming sentences.
Reading grows vocab but is tough.
Daily practice prevents forgetting.
Direct translation (Eng → Ger) overcomplicates sentences.
I read a whole book today, cover to cover.
“Obvious Adams” by Robert Updegraff. Originally written in 1916
It’s a short story about a businessman who travels to his clients, observes, learns, and makes recommendations based on the obvious. This makes him successful in biz.
Perspective matters!
I’ve never found a mobile game that was worth the time suck.
Mostly because they all seem to be ad-farms or pay-to-win.
Recently learned about SST - an IaC tool that is very very developer friendly.
Digging into it for work and am super impressed by its abilities. Worth checking out! sst.dev
After being sick for literally the whole month of January, I’m finally feeling better.
Daughter goes back to daycare and now has a 100+ fever.
Looks like we’re gonna get sick again here soon 😪
Sometimes it's hard to miss the writing on the wall -
here's to getting back on the grind 🥂
Finished “Supercommunicators” and now on to “The Art of Profitability”
2025 is the year of consuming books and expanding networks
The dishwasher manual would disagree ;)
I'm such a sucker for trying new technologies whenever I build something.
I want to get an MVP out today? Let's try a new routing technology.
New full stack app? Let's do it in Go (which I'm still learning)
The thing I need to work on most is ruthless prioritization.
"The most important goal of any conversation is to connect." – Charles Duhigg
"Supercommunicators" breaks conversations into three types:
Practical – Decision-making
Emotional – Feelings-focused
Social – Identity & belonging
To connect, recognize which one you're in and adapt.
Highly recommend!
If you have to go into multiple terminals to start your project, you're doing it wrong.
Containerizing + shell alias means that I can boot up all my project services just by typing "dcu", aliased to "docker compose up"
I can also do this for _all_ of my projects, so the cmd doesn't change.
I haven’t read that one, how do you like it?
Same a Reddit comment talking about NextJS really being more akin to a react frontend + Node BFF which I think is a good way to look at it.