Sev Furneaux

@nikitonsky Awesome! Be interested to know how you get on!

Occasionally it’ll throw in a harder B1/B2 level translation and ask how I got on 😅

I have a bizarre strategy for trying to read more German at my “level” of A2/B1 which I’ve never experienced before 😄. Claude Code grabs latest news from sites I like: guardian.com, taz.de, bbc.co.uk then translates those articles into A2/B1 level and then sends me 1-3 articles in the terminal to read.

It’s weirdly addictive, I want to read more and more. There’s no clutter of website design, just raw 1-3 paragraph summary in the bleakness of a CLI.

Just to reiterate: I’m not trying to sell everyone on AI here 😅, but would like to calmly and factually present how some workflows have changed for me 🙏

Using Opus 4.5 has made some excruciating tasks so much easier. Take last week for example, I had to totally rewrite an outdated project README, and the desirable outcome was the README was in the same format as other project READMEs. A particular issue was that the other READMEs were in a different tech stack. Not only did Opus 4.5 create the new README in 10 seconds, it did it with the same writing style/format as the other READMEs, but also the adjusted nuances of the different tech stack.

If you’re fortunate enough to avoid the “EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED!” never ending AI hype bro hosepipe of diarrhoea 💩, I am envious of you - it’s hard to shut that out given it creeps on to every platform (apart from this one, this place is the opposite 😅).

Most recent gushings of hosepipe parp was in December, when there was proclamations of “Opus 4.5 has CHANGED EVERYTHING!”

I really want to push back on this, but the thing is: since Opus 4.5 my workflow has changed, there’s no doubt about it.

@nonformality @ki_und_koffein Oh thanks! I’ll definitely give it a try 👀

To elaborate: the social media I’m seeking is probably a Twitter of 2009-2018. Very specific 😅, but can’t help feel nostalgic for those somewhat optimistic times. On face value, that social media no longer exists. But maybe 2026 social media is just a reflection of the current world, you’re either in one group or you’re in the other group: there’s nothing in the middle 🤷‍♂️

X is undoubtably where the AI hype bros dwell, but Mastodon feels like the opposite where everyone hates AI. Does the middle ground still exist? Folks willing to try things, to be adventurous yet also equally question things. The social media offering in 2026 is either one extreme or the other: it’s quite disappointing.

The developer “tribalism” of frameworks and languages: does that even matter anymore? 🤷‍♂️ I’ve been somewhat tribalistic at times, even up until a few months ago. But take a green field web app CRUD project: one could spin up 3 different versions in 3 different frameworks and languages, and then decide which one works the best. Hmm, maybe opinion still counts based on that, but I don’t know…it does make you think how fast things are changing.

After all this time, I finally “get” the use case for web components 😅. And now I understand them, the whole React vs web components debate makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Folks on both sides haven’t really helped with this discourse over the years 😬

Sandro Maglione’s free beginner course on Effect is so delightful. The incremental steps of each chapter based on improving fetch() handling and the way it is presented in such a clear and concise page layout. So good! 😌 https://www.typeonce.dev/course/effect-beginners-complete-getting-started

Previously, rendering forms and managing form state in #reactjs has been a frustrating experience without using third-party libraries. In React 19, actions and useActionState rectifies a lot of these frustrations, making it so much easier: https://react.dev/reference/react/useActionState.

If you were attempting to manage React form state prior to React 19, upgrading and using the new hook could remove a lot of boilerplate form logic.

Oh boy, not a great end to 2024 with a chest infection over Christmas 🥴. But thankfully feeling better now after 6 days of antibiotics.