Alberto Gimeno

Big little things!

Rochester Castle yesterday

I’ve fully embraced AI agents for coding in the last few weeks. Now I even use Claude and copilot at the same time in the same project: Claude for large and/or complex tasks and copilot for small edits like refactoring a single file because it’s faster (with GPT 4 models)

I wish blogs had a simple “I liked this” button at the end, like Medium’s claps. Nothing fancy, just a way to tell the author “hey, I read this and enjoyed it.”

User feedback is gold. Excited that most of the GitHero feedback so far matches the roadmap I’ve been planning 😀

How to build fast React apps: – use the react compiler – avoid useEffect as much as possible – use a state management library that supports selectors. Avoid react contexts most of the time – avoid css-in-js if possible – use data catching and prefetching – make components small

1 full year closing the rings

The start of the year is a natural time to reflect on goals and habits. But I find the end of summer just as powerful, right after I take vacations. It feels like a reset before the last stretch of the year. I reflect on what goals I want to accomplish by EOY.

All steel made after the first nuclear blast carries radioactive isotopes. Similarly all information created after the AI explosion likely carries machine-made content.

Getting back into mobile dev with React Native has been pure joy. Hot reload makes iteration instant. That fast feedback loop is addictive. And with the right care, apps feel truly native.

Which mobile apps you use regularly do you think provide the best user experience?

Feels like my coding agent’s system prompt today was set to “wrong answers only.”

Not sure if yesterday was productive, but I did discover about 20 ways a specific feature can’t be implemented.

I’ll sometimes just sit with my phone geeking out over tiny UI details in apps: animations, shadows, microinteractions, navigation, even the information architecture. Great exercise to level up my own apps.

Nobody talks about chatbots anymore.

Do you review PRs commit by commit or do you review the full diff only?

Adding AI features to GItHero (coming soon). It uses the GitHub models API so no additional setup is required. No API key, nothing. It just works.

The best coding sessions feel like gaming: Not too easy or boring. No impossible tasks. Just enough challenge to keep you in the zone. That’s flow. Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory applied to programming.

Crazy how the most critical code sometimes is the one that looks more brittle and hard to test. E.g. authentication flows happening in a webview communicating with the parent app through non standard message passing APIs (window.webkit namespace)

The best advice in the world means nothing if the listener isn’t ready to hear it. Timing and mindset matter as much as the message itself.

My job and side projects feed into each other. It’s a feedback loop of constant improvement. UI/UX, data fetching techniques, performance, release processes, … What I learn in one I adopt to the other.

Found a repetitive task where LLMs shine? Don’t use them manually every time. Ask for a script. Turn non-deterministic magic into deterministic automation.

⭐️ GitHero has a blog now. First post: "From opaque ids to human-readable paths: improving URL shareability and interoperability" githero.app/blog/url-rev...

I’ve transitioned to a new team at Stripe and started a new role as a Mobile Engineer 📱

@joshwcomeau.com hey, I think this is not working correctly in your blog. The second counter is not updating automatically. It does when scrubbing only. Tested on Chrome/iOS.

⚛️ It's not mentioned anywhere as far as I've seen, but the experimental React Activity component keeps even the state of the scroll position when switching between hidden and visible states. This is awesome!

Spain in the Dark Is Safer Than Elsewhere With Power www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/o...

This year's State of Devs 2025 survey is now open! survey.devographics.com/survey/state...

We had an 10-hour blackout in Spain (yes, the whole country). Did we have chaos in the streets?? Nope www.reddit.com/r/allinspani... I love my country 🫶😀 Maybe we should have a blackout from time to time.

El otro día di una charla sobre GitHero.app y ya está disponible la grabación!! 👇

Nos vemos en el SOSZ? Yo ya tengo mi entrada sosz.cachirulovalley.com

Why it’s nice to compete against a large, profitable company longform.asmartbear.com/compete-on-p...

Morning ☀️😋

Adding console.logs to new code to verify that's being executed because I can't believe tests are passing on the first attempt.

That time of the year

New desk. Model: Flexispot Q8

Why browsers didn't implement an embedded RSS/Atom reader? I could've been super natural for everybody. If a feed is detected in a page you would see a "subscribe to new posts" button and somewhere you'd have a reading list. Why browsers did implement reading lists but not for pages with feeds?

We are leveling up our cooking skills at home.