Software developer. I write about building systems with language models and about the technical decisions that never make it into the documentation.
Three free tools you need to know exist. One imposes a way of working before any code gets written. Another shows you where your tokens go. The third gives it design judgement. What each one does, how to install them, and what they cost you.
In almost every language, incorrect code breaks and tells you. An incorrect SQL query runs, returns rows and nobody finds out. What to check before accepting one, and what changed in the databases themselves.
Both were dragging the same flaw around: the application did more work than it needed on every change. Angular 21 and React 19 fixed it, and the fixes are exactly inverse to each other.
What you actually pay for when using a language model to write code, why the bill almost never comes from the model you picked, and the practices that cut spending most without lowering the quality of the result.
You deleted a commit, something broke and you do not know when, or you need to undo something you already pushed. Five commands almost nobody uses until they need them, explained with the exact situation that calls for each one.
Almost nobody commits a password on purpose. They leak through four routes that do not look dangerous, and one of them leaves the key visible even after you delete it in the next commit.
It compiles, it passes the tests and it looks tidy. That does not mean it is right. Six concrete things worth checking, in the order the real problems show up.
Nobody has time to test everything. But there are four kinds of test that give you almost all of the benefit for very little effort, and several that get written constantly and are worth nothing.
Your assistant answers general questions well but knows nothing about your database. Giving it access means writing an ordinary program. What MCP is, how to write one, and the three security mistakes that keep repeating.
You touch the sensor and you are in, without typing anything. What exactly happens between the browser and your server, why your database stops storing secrets, and the three problems nobody mentions in the announcements.
Job queue, full-text search, cache, events and semantic search. Four services people tend to add to the stack that the database you already have can handle, with the exact SQL for each one.
From a platform that only ran on Windows to a cross-platform one with artificial intelligence support in its base library. The complete path, and the decision that defined each stage.
The screen takes four seconds and the server is not under load. It is almost always the same problem, it has a name, and it is fixed by changing one line. How to spot it without special tools.
Four changes to the Dockerfile that cut the size tenfold, speed up every build and remove almost all of the attack surface. With the numbers for each step and the complete Dockerfile.
A user reports an error from two hours ago and there is no way to find their requests among millions of lines. Three changes that turn your logs into something you can query, without switching tools.
