Code & Curiosity by Maximilian Schwarzmüller

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...

There's a new AI model almost every day. Is that a problem?

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 Gemma 3n. That would be too bad because it looks pretty interesting and amazing.

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 bold move!

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, there WAS a lot going on. Time to unpack!

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 does work for me. But I got a couple of use-cases that really help me get more done!

LLMs often default to a single tech stack (like React, Tailwind, ShadCN). This tendency could reduce competition and innovation in the long run, potentially leading to a development monoculture.

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're not far behind the "big models" you can access via ChatGPT etc. At least in my experience. I'm using them for all kinds of tasks...

React Compiler RC (Release Candidate) was released! Almost one year after its initial release (back then in experimental status), it's now almost ready for production use. And it can save you LOTS OF time of writing useMemo(), useCallback() and memo()!

Google released a couple of AI Agent related products & services! The A2A protocol is maybe the most interesting initiative. Also because it kind of clashes with MCP. Or does it?

Microsoft & VS Code are striking back against Cursor & Windsurf. And not just by making GitHub Copilot better...

It's essentially ONE key feature I really don't want to miss anymore. Well, maybe 1.5 features...

MCP has been a hot buzzword. But what exactly is that model context protocol thing about? And who do LLMs actually use tools?

Obviously, parts of the web dev community are upset: Why didn't they choose Rust? Well, turns out they had good reasons!

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 pretty amazing. It always has been. But v7 especially is exciting because it offers "library mode" and "framework mode". But "library mode" then actually can be used in at least two different ways. And the docs don't necessarily cover that very well...

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 want. Maybe. But maybe, we'll also see a different outcome.

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 inclined to do so, though.

More money is thrown at AI models, that seem to become more capable & cheaper. Is it "Game Over" for us humans?

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 releases - like React 19 and Angular 18 & 19. But what else?

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?

As always, backwards-compatible (though there is one big breaking change!) but packed with features!

TailwindCSS is an amazing CSS framework that changed how many (most?) web developers style their websites. But vanilla CSS also developed quite a bit over all those years. And it has certain advantages over TailwindCSS.

Astro is a really amazing web framework. But it seems as if not that many developers are actually using it. That's too bad!

You can see AI as a threat or embrace those tools to boost your productivity!