Code & Curiosity by Maximilian Schwarzmüller
Episodes
2025 - My Look Back
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Another year's over. You know what that means! Time for a look back. MY look back in this case. And it's been quite a year. In good and bad ways.
Use Agent Skills, NOT MCP
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
MCP has been all the hype for the last 1.5 years. Kind of, at least. But you can safely ignore it as a developer. Agent Skills are the way better alte...
Udemy is getting acquired!
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Coursera buys Udemy. Or they merge - depending on how you look at it. Either way, I have some initial thoughts about it.
What's going on with React?
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We had multiple React-related severe security vulnerabilities within a few weeks. Did React get too complex? Is the client-server complexity eating in...
The Death Of Coding Tutorials
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Remember 2016-2022? The golden era of coding tutorials? They still exist today! But they changed. And they're getting less views. Let's talk about it.
AI's an amazing enabler for devs
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is not just a great assistant or for "vibe coding". It's also amazing if you know stuff but not everything.
Is Gemini 3 Replacing Frontend Devs?
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gemini 3 is clearly optimized for a very specific task. And it's not really related to your job as a frontend developer.
Gemini 3 is here!
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Let another hype cycle begin - Google Gemini 3 is here! And it may be amazing - if we can trust benchmarks.
APIs are locking up - thanks to Gen AI
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's a disturbing "trend" (kind of): Some APIs are locking up or charging (quite a bit of) money for usage. X (Twitter) is one example. Reddit is a...
Gen AI is a HUGE cybersecurity problem!
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gen AI is helping cyber criminals become more efficient. And we're only at the beginning.
Is English The Programming Language Of The Future?
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cursor CEO Michael Truell mentioned in a Podcast that he sees a future where we move away from "traditional" programming languages, towards English be...
Is React Becoming Too Complex?
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There has been some drama related to Vercel's new Workflow Development Kit, the "use workflow" and "use step" directives and React's complexity.
Is the AI hype over? Meta lays off 600 people from AI division
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Meta laid of 600 people from their AI division. Just a few months after going on a 100s of millions hiring spree during the summer 2025. Is this the e...
AWS is very useful. But you might not need it.
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to Flutter Flock?
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One year ago, Flutter Flock was announced - a fork of Flutter that aimed to fix many of the shortcomings of the Flutter project. Looks like Flutter d...
AI is making me dumber
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI is there. AI unlocks powerful new capabilities and business models. Like my AI headshot generator (https://business-headshots.ai/). It can make you...
The NPM Package Attacks - What We Need To Change
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There have been multiple npm package attacks over the last couple of days. The impact has been huge. And it may be even bigger in the future. As devel...
ChatGPT Agent & AI are killing the internet...
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
ChatGPT unveiled their brand-new "ChatGPT Agent" - a LLM-powered AI agent that can use a virtual computer on your behalf. For example, to browse the i...
There's too much AI hype!
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's lots of hype around AI - specifically around "AI Agents" (it's the year of AI Agents after all!!!) and "vibe coding". That's a pity. Because t...
MIT Study: ChatGPT Is Making Us Dumber
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A recent MIT study on the use of ChatGPT and its implications on our brains confirms what most of us already experienced: We're relying too much on AI...
Too many AI models!
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's a new AI model almost every day. Is that a problem?
Gemma 3n may be GAME CHANGING
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At Google I/O 2025 Google, of course, announced LOTS OF AI-related services, projects and initiatives. It's therefore easy to miss the announcement of...
Remix is no longer a React framework
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I didn't see that coming! After merging Remix with React Router, the future of Remix is ... NOT about React. Okay, maybe it makes sense. But still a b...
Google & Claude: The AI hype trains are taking different tracks!
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What a week in AI? Well, okay, I guess every week is "packed with announcements". But with Google IO, tons of projects and the Claude 4 model releases...
5 ACTUALLY useful ways of using Generative AI & LLMs
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of hype around LLMs & generative AI - especially when it comes to "AI Agents". I don't have a super agent (or an army of agents) that do...
React, Tailwind, ShadCN - Is The Default LLM Stack A Problem?
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
LLMs often default to a single tech stack (like React, Tailwind, ShadCN). This tendency could reduce competition and innovation in the long run, poten...
Open LLMs like Gemma or Qwen are AMAZING!
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I've slept for too long on open LLMs like Gemma, Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek etc. They're AMAZING! Using them is simple (with LM Studio or Ollama) and they'...
React Compiler Release Candidate Released!
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
React Compiler RC (Release Candidate) was released! Almost one year after its initial release (back then in experimental status), it's now almost read...
A2A - Google's bet on AI Agents
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Google released a couple of AI Agent related products & services! The A2A protocol is maybe the most interesting initiative. Also because it kind of c...
Microsoft & VS Code strike back against Cursor
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Microsoft & VS Code are striking back against Cursor & Windsurf. And not just by making GitHub Copilot better...
It's named COpilot for a reason!
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's essentially ONE key feature I really don't want to miss anymore. Well, maybe 1.5 features...
MCP: Hype or Useful?
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
MCP has been a hot buzzword. But what exactly is that model context protocol thing about? And who do LLMs actually use tools?
TypeScript is ported to Go - but why not Rust?
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Obviously, parts of the web dev community are upset: Why didn't they choose Rust? Well, turns out they had good reasons!
Why "vibe coding" is NOT my future
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Originally coined by Andrej Karpathy, it describes a way of coding where you don't write any code but you just ask (and blindly trust) LLMs.
React Router 7 is too amazing to settle on suboptimal docs
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
React Router 7 is pretty amazing. It always has been. But v7 especially is exciting because it offers "library mode" and "framework mode". But "librar...
There's An AI Skill Gap Growing
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
ChatGPT & co are becoming better and more capable all the time. Soon, every human will be able to use AI assistants to do pretty much anything they wa...
CRA is dead ... long live Vite?
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Create React App (CRA) has officially been marked as "deprecated" now. Great - the ecosystem moved on to Vite years ago already. The React is not incl...
StarGate & DeepSeek R1 - AI keeps on marching forward! Should we worry?
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
More money is thrown at AI models, that seem to become more capable & cheaper. Is it "Game Over" for us humans?
Looking back at 2024 as a web developer
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2024 is (almost) over. And it's been a difficult year for web devs. At least for some. At the same time, it's been a year that saw multiple big releas...
Web Development has had some rough 1.5 years...
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a rough 1.5 years for (web) developers. Layoffs, AI and the general economy are all not helping. So....should you still learn how to code?
Angular 19 is a BEAST!
20 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As always, backwards-compatible (though there is one big breaking change!) but packed with features!
Tailwind vs Vanilla CSS - should you reconsider?
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
TailwindCSS is an amazing CSS framework that changed how many (most?) web developers style their websites. But vanilla CSS also developed quite a bit ...
Why's nobody using Astro?
10 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Astro is a really amazing web framework. But it seems as if not that many developers are actually using it. That's too bad!
Embrace GitHub Copilot, Cursor AI & ChatGPT as a developer!
03 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You can see AI as a threat or embrace those tools to boost your productivity!
What happened to React 19?
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When will React 19 stable be release? And why is its release delayed? Max takes a closer look in this episode.
AI's facing a big challenge!
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Generative AI had a huge impact. And it's probably only getting started. Or maybe it isn't ... maybe it'll have less of an impact than many people thi...
I LOVE learning new stuff!
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In (web) development, there's always something new to learn. And, yes, this can feel overwhelming. But it's actually amazing!
Creating a productive development environment
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We spend a lot of time writing code. Therefore, your development environment should be set up to make you as productive as possible. But you can also ...
Do you REALLY need to know Git?
23 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Of course, as a developer, you write code. Therefore, you must know the language and libraries you're working with. But what about other tools? Git? D...
Why Express.js?
16 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Express.js dominates the Node.js framework landscape. It seems as if almost every Node.js developer is using it. But why is that the case?
What's the best framework for building a SaaS?
09 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Building a SaaS (or any web-based project) has never been easier. There are plenty of frameworks and technologies to pick from. But which one is best?...
Remix might win the React framework race - thanks to React Router!
02 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Remix team announced that they would pause working on Remix and instead focus on bringing all core Remix features over to React Router. Because Re...
My opinion on Angular 18 & React 19
26 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two major frameworks (yes, React is a library .... ) and two major versions. Here's my opinion on both!
Should you use Bun, Deno etc. instead of Node.js?
19 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Node.js allows you to run JavaScript outside of the browser. So does Bun, Deno and some other JavaScript runtimes that emerged over the last couple of...
I'm not interested in your strong opinions!
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
You're preferring const over let? Think again! You're using Angular? Is that a joke? You get the point ... I really hate that part of social media an...
Are we going back to PHP with fullstack JavaScript?
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In my early days as a web developer, I got started with HTML, CSS, JS and PHP. Nowadays, modern fullstack JavaScript / JSX code can kind of feel like...
Should you use Next.js 14 & the "App Router"?
28 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With Next.js 14, the "App Router" became fully stable, since the last missing piece - "Server Actions" - were marked as stable. I've worked with it fo...
How many programming languages should you learn & know?
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's an endless amount of programming languages out there. And new ones are released frequently. So ... how many should you learn and know?
Should you use a VPS instead of Vercel, Netlify & co?
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's been some debate whether services like Vercel and Netlify are overpriced and you should use a VPS for hosting websites instead. The answer is...
Smart Developers Write Simple Code
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As you're growing as a developer, it's easy to introduce unnecessary complexities and abstractions into your code. But you might not always need the m...
HTMX is amazing!
31 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
HTMX is a JavaScript library that essentially extends HTML and allows you to send AJAX requests (and handle responses + update the UI) without writing...
Are there too many JavaScript frameworks?
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a (frontend) JavaScript developer, you got plenty of options and alternatives. You can learn Angular, React, Vue, Svelte, SolidJS and many other fr...
Devin - The World's First AI Software Engineer
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Devin - the world's first AI software engineer - was announced. What does that mean for software developers? And how does it actually work? Let's take...
Should you REALLY learn JavaScript before React, Angular etc?
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Max explains why he thinks that you might not need to master JS before diving into React, Angular or other frameworks.
Why (almost) every JavaScript developer should learn TypeScript
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Max explains why he thinks that most JS developers benefit from learning TypeScript.
Are Metaframeworks Like NextJS The Future Of React & co?
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Metaframeworks like NextJS, Remix or Nuxt have become very popular over the last ~2 years. Indeed, React is now recommending NextJS as the best way of...
React 19 Is Coming!
18 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Max analyzes the official React 19 announcement blog post and explores all the exciting features that will be included in this upcoming major React ve...
Don't (Just) Chase The Shiny, New Stuff - A Case For jQuery?
11 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast episode, I discuss the dangers of getting caught in a bubble of strong opinions and how it can be counterproductive for web developers...
React vs Angular vs Vue - Which Framework Should You Pick?
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join me as I explain which key decision factors could be considered when choosing a modern frontend JavaScript framework or library. I compare the mo...
AI & Developers - Will We Survive?
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2023 has been the year of AI. Barely a week went by without some new AI service or model being announced. In this episode we'll dive into the rapidly ...