Alexandria L.

Every side project teaches you something. This one taught me to be intentional with my tech stack. Here’s what I’m using to build StoryChain, and why. 🛠 Backend 🔹 Fastify + TypeScript (strict mode) 🔹 MongoDB + Mongoose 🔹 Redis + BullMQ 🔹 Authentication with Clerk 🎨 Frontend 🔹 React + Vite 🔹 Tailwind CSS + Radix UI 🔹 TipTap 🔹 React Query The goal isn’t perfection. It’s a codebase that’s easy to grow without fear. What’s one tool in your stack you’d never build without? #WebDevelopment #TypeScript #React #NodeJS #MongoDB #BuildInPublic

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Software engineers fear the AI that will take their job while the real danger I see should be in companies and solution owners themselves. Products that you spent years and tons of dollars for buildng selling it for whatever the number of subscriptions is can now be easily cloned and it costs nothing but the Gen AI subscription and some small resources. I am really curious of how the scene will look like after maybe Q2 of 2026. The development that business owners needs to follow “not to fail in the common nokia example” is now talking days not years like all used before!! #ArtificialIntelligence #GenerativeAI #SaaS #StartupLife #ProductManagement  #SoftwareEngineering #TechTrends #DigitalTransformation  #Innovation #FutureOfWork #Entrepreneurship  

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One of my favorite JavaScript one-liners: .filter(Boolean) Filtering out falsy values from an array meant chaining conditions and hoping I hadn't missed an edge case. When you pass Boolean as a callback to .filter(), JavaScript calls Boolean(item) on every element. Anything falsy - null, undefined, 0, "", false, NaN - gets removed. What you're left with is a clean array of only meaningful values. It's not just about writing less code. It's about communicating intent clearly.  This pattern shines especially in real-world scenarios: cleaning up API responses, processing user input, or combining .map() and .filter() to transform and sanitize data in a single chain. #JavaScript #WebDevelopment #SoftwareEngineering #CleanCode #Frontend #Programming #JS #CodeQuality #TechTips #Developer --- I post about web engineering, front-end and soft skills in development. Follow me here: Irene Tomaini

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One thing I cared a lot about when building facet.build was privacy. I directly attribute this to my masters in library science and a career building web software securely to protect sensitive information. Resumes contain some of the most personal professional information we share, so I didn't want this to be another platform that tracks people, sells data, or turns careers into analytics. Perhaps you shouldn't release your contact information to platforms that would do this, or at the very least, obtain an email or phone number that will specifically be used for your job hunt. facet.build doesn’t use tracking cookies by default, doesn’t sell or share user data, and keeps profiles private unless you intentionally publish a specific build. Even then, it will only share the information you want. Don't believe me? This is one of my public builds: https://lnkd.in/gAmUYSK6 Only the content you choose ever becomes public. Everything else stays yours. You can export your data anytime or delete it completely. I wanted people to feel like they truly owned their career data; not just handed it over to a black box.

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Dear Sis and Bro Devs, don't quit development now, it's becoming so funny and interesting, and highly *profitable* to an unimaginable magnitude. Yes. There are going to be zillions of "Vibe Coding" Apps going to production... and fail, the week or month, or semester after. Then they call you, the devs. In absolute urgency mode, because the CEO or CMO said : "V1 must be shipped on September 2025.", and because they are so happy the app or Saas got so much traction. Problem: it hangs now, in November 2025. 😂 Then, you set your conditions. (Be nice.) There are already companies offering consultancy services to fix that. (Picture). But as a freelancer, or high paid employee in a clever corp, you'll make a fortune for 2 reasons: 1) Companies in trouble because of vibe coding disasters will call you. 2) Companies that want to *avoid* the vibe coding disaster will sign any condition with you / your corp. Greatest time *ever* to be a dev.

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Imma ruffle some feathers with this one, I think. I have a custom project where I can't use react/your-fav-js-framework (bc reasons). JS modules + Web Components + this little base class have made the "vanilla.js" stack a joy to work with. ``` export class CustomElement extends HTMLElement {    attachHTML(html) {        this.innerHTML = html;        const tags = this.querySelectorAll("[data-tag]");        for (const el of tags) {            if (!el.tagged) {                this[el.dataset.tag] = el;                el.tagged = true;            }        }        const clickHandlers = this.querySelectorAll("[data-on-click]");        for (const el of clickHandlers) {            if (!el.onClicked) {                el.addEventListener("click", (event) => this[el.dataset.onClick](event));                el.onClicked = true;            }        } } } ``` It's not "totally robust and foolproof", but it's like 30 lines and does 90% of what I want from react anyway. Don't sleep on native browser capabilities.

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Over the last several weeks, I’ve been building GK Mensah Live—a NestJS/Nx-powered backend with gRPC, GraphQL, Drizzle ORM, and a Next.js client. The goal is to build a secure platform where my Pastor can spin up livestream-ready Zoom sessions, manage memberships and subscriptions, and deliver premium content with confidence. What I Built Core Engine: Multi-service NestJS setup (core, gateway, payment) talking via gRPC and sharing Drizzle models. Security-first Auth: JWT + admin key guardrails, API key propagation through proto, GraphQL, and frontend. Zoom Meeting Flow: Full integration from GraphQL mutation → Zoom REST API → persistence → live dashboards. Front-end Experience: Next.js 14 app directory, Apollo GraphQL client, protected routes, and a studio mode. DevEx Boosts: Shared proto contracts, Drizzle migrations, Dockerized services, and clean GraphQL playground docs. The Ups & Downs gRPC/GraphQL alignment: Extending protos to expose adminKey forced a deep dive into shared DTOs, Nest resolvers, and TS types. Zoom mystery: Meetings were created, but the UI showed empty data. After layered logging, I identified serialization gaps and fixed the mapper; the takeaway—always verify every hop, even when external APIs succeed. Deployment constraints: 512 MB RAM limit on free tiers forced me to rethink provisioning and closely monitor memory usage. It’s not glamorous, but capacity planning is as real as coding. Next Steps I'm looking forward to scaling this up so that users who register as admins can get an instance of this platform to host premium content. They can create their own plans, adminKeys, and premium livestream-ready Zoom sessions. Encouragement for Fellow Builders Every product journey includes “Why is this empty response?” nights and “We need more RAM” debates. Keep iterating. Instrument the system. Talk with your team. Celebrate when logs finally show the answer you needed. Ship, learn, adjust, repeat. If you’re tackling similar multi-service builds, I’d be happy to share more details—drop a comment or DM. Onward! 💪

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Global state isn’t your trash bin. Too many React apps collapse under the weight of an overstuffed store. Developers throw everything into Zustand or Redux and then wonder why re-renders spike, selectors misbehave, and debugging feels impossible. A global store should be lean and intentional. Keep transient UI state local. Split slices where it makes sense. Memoize selectors. Treat global state as infrastructure, not a dumping ground. It’s the difference between a codebase that scales gracefully and one that becomes unfixable after the next feature rush. #React #Zustand #FrontendArchitecture

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Components Built & Animation Errors Week 5 of building GrainFree - Design, Details & Deep Dives This past week, I focused on getting the front-end foundations in place using Next.js, TailwindCSS, and TypeScript. I built out the header with a rotating Leaf toggle icon, a mobile overlay menu, a reusable button component, a styled hero section, and a footer. Along the way, I learned how to use the App Router, create responsive layouts, work with SVGs, and register local fonts, all while keeping things accessible and scalable. It may not look like much yet, but every piece is teaching me how to build smarter, not just faster. Next up: finishing the other easy-to-do page layouts and fix responsiveness. ------------------------- If you're into building tools with intention, not just shipping features, I’ll be sharing every step along the way. Follow for the journey, stay for the progress. 📈 #webdevelopment #buildinpublic #softwareengineering #webdesign #creativecoding #aiproducts #aiandcode #purposefultech

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One thing I’m learning while building a tech platform: Community is not created by features. It’s created by culture. The culture we’re building around BIT Voices is simple: Black Builders share what they’re working on. Black Builders help each other win. Black Builders collaborate instead of compete. When that happens, something powerful emerges. Ideas turn into products. Products turn into companies. Companies turn into ownership. That’s the culture we want to cultivate with Black technologists and builders. Because innovation grows faster when builders grow together. #BlackExcellence #BlackInTech #BlackBuilders #BlackTechnologists #BuilsInPublic #TechCommunity #StartupCulture #BITVoices

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#day42 Riverpod: Understanding StateNotifier & StateNotifierProvider (Real App Logic) After exploring basic providers, it’s time to learn the most powerful tool in Riverpod - StateNotifier. This is where real app logic lives. Why StateNotifier Is a Game-Changer? Clean separation of business logic Test-friendly Reusable Works beautifully with Riverpod’s reactive updates Recommended by most Flutter experts today #Flutter #Riverpod #StateNotifier #FlutterStateManagement #FlutterDev #DartLang #AppDevelopment #MobileDevelopment #100DaysOfCode #CodingJourney #DevCommunity #FlutterTips #LearnFlutter #BuildInPublic

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Vibe coding continues to allow me to rapidly develop, especially in places where I am not an expert in like UI/UX. I was getting tired of the rigid way to create and refine songs on my side project, Lyric Genie. All I had to do to fix it was to assess what was wrong, what would fix it, and make a plan for that to happen. Then I let Lovable and Cursor do most of the work while I hand coded in some specific places. In a week, everything was the way I wanted it. Vibe coding reduces the amount of energy it takes to experiment and rework code than without the AI coding tools. This has led me to learn through doing because it is so much easier. How has vibe coding changed how you operate vs having to hand code everything? I went into more detail on my blog post linked in the comments.

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