Alberto Gimeno

@gimenete.net

Software Engineer who loves building developer tools and cloud services. Now at Stripe. Building githero.app on the side: a modern and delightful GitHub client. 📍Zaragoza, Spain

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.”

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

I’ve renewed my old Apple developer account. I got charged but I still can’t access it… 🤔 I emailed support. Anyway, a native macOS version of GitHero is coming soon!

⚛️ 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!