Olivia Kasten

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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🛝 Good Playground Map: Solving a real-world problem with frontend tech After moving to Annapolis, MD with my family, I quickly found it challenging to locate good playgrounds nearby. There wasn't a single, easy-to-use resource for finding them in my area. So I built one: 👉 Good Playground Map - a free, mobile-first, open-source web app to help families discover playgrounds. - 🛠️ Built with modern tech I wanted to explore: Next.js, Mapbox, and Supabase - 📱 Designed for real-life mobile use on the go - 🌍 Community-powered and growing with user contributions - 💡 My first major open-source project! This project gave me a chance to: - Design and build a fast, responsive frontend from scratch - Integrate real-time mapping and filtering capabilities - Implement support for scalable, user-contributed data Whether you're a parent in the DMV, a fellow frontend dev, or just love seeing side projects come to life - I'd love your feedback on the app or the tech behind it. The code is open-source, and I'm excited to keep building and learning. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eEepRVRH Update: New version combines open-source map data (OpenStreetMap) and AI (Perplexity) to automate playground discovery and descriptions, read about it here: https://lnkd.in/ekDtRj9C #frontend #opensource #nextjs #react #mapbox #supabase #vercel #personalproject #kids #javascript #ux #sideproject

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Verify, then trust. #Google kept telling me to use Gemini within its hub. Then I tried this morning. In one of the few first questions, I asked Gemini about upcoming closures in the Jersey City Public School. And it confidently told me that tomorrow, February 9th, is Presidents' Day. Spoilers: It’s actually February 16th. The old mantra was always "Trust, but verify." But as we integrate AI deeper into our lives and workflows, I think the order needs to flip: Verify, then trust. These models are incredible for brainstorming, coding, and drafting, but they can still "hallucinate" facts—especially with temporal logic or specific local schedules. Confident delivery doesn't always equal accuracy. AI is a world-class co-pilot, but you’re still the captain of the ship. Whether it’s school dates in JC or project deadlines at work, that final human check is what keeps the "intelligence" in Artificial Intelligence. #JerseyCity #GenerativeAI #Gemini #TechTrends #Productivity #HumanCentricAI #FutureOfWork

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Robinhood is making a bold move into copy trading with its new feature, Robinhood Social! 🚀 This marks a significant pivot for the platform, which previously voiced concerns about rival services operating "under the radar" of regulators. Here's the breakdown: * **A Major About-Face:** After CEO Vlad Tenev once suggested copy trading could draw regulatory scrutiny, Robinhood is now embracing the space. This signals a calculated bet on a shifting regulatory landscape in the U.S. ⚖️ * **Introducing Robinhood Social:** This new feature will allow users to manually replicate trades from verified prominent investors and even members of Congress. Imagine getting insights into those portfolios! 👀 * **Manual vs. Automatic:** Unlike services like eToro's CopyTrader or Dub, Robinhood Social emphasizes manual replication. Users will need to actively choose to mirror trades, a distinction that could be crucial for navigating regulatory complexities. This approach may address the very concerns Tenev raised previously. * **Regulatory Evolution:** The timing suggests a broader shift in how U.S. regulators view social trading. With eToro's successful IPO demonstrating investor appetite, Robinhood's entry could open the floodgates for more fintech companies to offer similar services. 🌊 * **What to Expect:** Robinhood plans a cautious beta launch with 10,000 users early next year. The platform will require identity verification and proof of actual portfolio positions to ensure transparency. This move isn't just another feature launch; it's a potential game-changer for U.S. fintech. Robinhood is positioning itself to capture a growing market and seeking new revenue streams in an increasingly competitive environment. What do you think this means for the future of retail investing? Share your thoughts below! 👇

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Coding agents aren't perfect. But the outcomes are real. Features that used to take months now take days. To be clear, it takes some getting used to. It's new. It feels strange. You need to learn to do it. It forces you to approach the problem like a conductor of an orchestra rather than a musician playing an instrument. But the outcomes are real. Every day you wait, the gap widens between those who get it and those who don't.

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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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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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