TWIL October 17th 2025

• It's entirely possible to write a Tanstack Query replacement that works
  • You probably shouldn't though, there are a lot of edge-cases/nice QoL features
  • Maybe makes more sense to roll your own for a work project, especially if you can re-use it?
  • Or for a personal project you're doing with the express purpose of learning

Links

The Programmer Identity Crisis - Simon Højberg

Another eloquent AI takedown which expresses my own distaste for the technology better than I ever could. I became a software engineer because I enjoyed writing code, making things and solving problems; not because I wanted to be manager for a gaggle of mechanized junior devs. I'll use LLMs occasionally to get myself on the right track in an area I'm not familiar with, generate ideas for a solution or as fancy autocomplete, but if they're going to just write all the code for me I may as well have used my business degree and paid someone else to maintain that mess.

Styling siblings with CSS has never been easier. Experimenting with sibling-count and sibling-index - Brecht De Ruyte

These look like they'll be incredibly useful in 5 years when they have enough browser support to be usable. Knowing where in a list an element is, in pure CSS, opens up so many possibilities.