A senior frontend engineer and former VP of Engineering shares a detailed retrospective on a 5-month job search in 2025-2026. Out of 60 applications, 78% were rejected without an interview, 23% ghosted entirely, and only 13 led to conversations. Key observations include the rise of AI-automated screening making it harder to pass initial filters, the blurring of job levels (junior, mid, senior, staff), and the challenge of being simultaneously over- and under-qualified when transitioning from executive leadership back to IC roles. The search ended successfully with a role at Duna, which was praised for its humane hiring process.

An evaluation of AI-generated frontend code in a real product reveals a recurring pattern: AI performs well in isolated, localized contexts but struggles to maintain consistency at the system level. The post argues that AI should be used as a candidate generator and validator rather than as the final decision-maker in code review.

C# 15 introduces the `union` keyword in .NET 11 Preview 2, allowing developers to declare a closed set of case types with compiler-enforced exhaustive pattern matching. Unlike object, marker interfaces, or abstract base classes, union types don't require related types and prevent external extension. The compiler generates a struct with implicit conversions from each case type and astruct wiproperty. Switch expressions over union types are exhaustive without needing a discard arm, and adding a new case type triggers compiler warnings on incomplete switches. Custom union types are also supported via amarker inteattribute for existing libraries, including a non-boxing access pattern for performance-sensitive scenarios. Related proposals for closed hierarchies and closed enums round out a comprehensive exhaustiveness story for C#.

PowerToys 0.100 ships with a brand-new Shortcut Guide that detects the active application and surfaces relevant shortcuts in a side pane. Command Palette gains an Extension Gallery for browsing and managing extensions, plus multi-monitor Dock support with per-display configurations. Power Display sees reliability and compatibility improvements including a new Max Compatibility Mode. ZoomIt adds webcam overlay support during recording and multi-clip appending with transitions. Under the hood, the project has been upgraded to .NET 10, the installer is 15% smaller, auto-update is more reliable, and Quick Accent and Workspaces have migrated to native Fluent-inspired WPF styling.

Xata has reduced Postgres database branching times from 20+ seconds to 1-2 seconds through a combination of custom storage (Xatastor using ZFS over NVMe-oF) and warm pools of pre-provisioned Kubernetes pods. Branches use copy-on-write storage so you only pay for diffs to the parent. With scale-to-zero billing per minute, 1,000 short-lived branches cost roughly $1. Real-world customers like AI coding agents and CI/CD preview environments are using thousands of branches per week for under $30/month. The architecture separates compute from storage, allowing volumes to be hot-connected to waiting pods in milliseconds.

Chrome 146 introduces three notable features for web developers. Scroll-triggered animations enable declarative CSS-based control of animations based on scroll position, replacing common JavaScript-based scroll detection patterns. Scoped custom element registries allow multiple custom element definitions for the same tag name within a page, preventing naming conflicts when using libraries from multiple sources. The Sanitizer API provides a built-in way to strip script-executing content from user-supplied HTML, making it easier to build XSS-free web apps — this updated version is also available in Firefox.

A software engineer reflects on a moment where they let Claude handle an entire bug investigation and fix end-to-end — without ever reading the Sentry issue, the code, or the diff — and only realized it after merging. Claude happened to be correct, but the workflow would have looked identical if it had been wrong. The post argues that AI tools are valuable when they sharpen your thinking, but dangerous when they become a way to skip the cognitive work entirely. The author's new rule: if you can't explain the change, you can't ship it.

pg_kpart is a new PostgreSQL extension (v1.0) that enforces partition key usage by rejecting queries that would scan all partitions of a partitioned table. Without a usable predicate on the partition key, such queries cause full-hierarchy scans that saturate I/O and degrade performance for all connected users. The extension turns a fragile developer convention into a database-enforced guarantee, with features including an audit mode for gradual rollout, blacklist/whitelist scoping to target specific tables, and a dedicated SQLSTATE for application-level error handling. It is open source under the PostgreSQL license and available on GitHub.

A comprehensive guide to EF Core performance optimization in .NET 10, covering ten key techniques: using AsNoTracking() for read-only queries, compiled queries for hot paths, compiled models for large schemas, fixing N+1 problems with eager loading, AsSplitQuery() to avoid cartesian explosion, bulk operations with ExecuteUpdateAsync/ExecuteDeleteAsync, Select() projections to avoid over-fetching, proper DbContext lifetime management with IDbContextFactory, parameterized queries for plan cache reuse, and logging slow queries with Serilog. Includes a prioritized action plan and FAQ addressing common misconceptions.

A step-by-step guide to building an HTTP-based MCP (Model Context Protocol) server using ASP.NET and the ModelContextProtocol.AspNetCore NuGet package. Covers project setup, registering the MCP server in Program.cs, creating tool classes with McpServerToolType and McpServerTool attributes, writing descriptive parameter annotations so AI clients can discover and invoke tools, and connecting the server to AI clients like GitHub Copilot or VS Code via a .mcp.json config file. Uses a product catalog search as a concrete example, showing how a natural language question gets translated into a tool call and back into a human-readable answer.

Java 26 introduces a range of improvements spanning performance, security, and language features. Key highlights include: restrictions on reflective modification of final fields to strengthen encapsulation; removal of the long-deprecated Applet API; AOT object caching now available with any garbage collector including ZGC; HTTP/3 support in the HTTP Client API via QUIC; G1 GC throughput improvements reducing thread synchronization overhead; a second preview of PEM encoding APIs for cryptographic objects; sixth preview of Structured Concurrency; second preview of Lazy Constants for faster startup; eleventh incubator of the Vector API for SIMD-based computation; and a fourth preview extending pattern matching to primitive types in instanceof and switch.

Git 2.55.0 introduces several notable features: a new `git history fixup` subcommand that amends staged changes into an existing commit and auto-rebases stacked branches; fsmonitor daemon support for Linux using inotify(7); the ability to push to a group of remotes with fsmonitor d a

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Gitto cap lane width; batched blob downloads for partial clones in git-grep and git-cherry; and Rust is now a required build dependency unless explicitly disabled.

SkiaSharp 4.148.0 is now available on NuGet as the first stable release of SkiaSharp v4. The release brings a Skia engine updated to milestone m148, delivering up to 24% faster GPU rendering (65→80 FPS for shadowed UIs), 6x faster CPU Perlin-noise shaders, variable font support, color font palettes, animated WebP encoding, and a cleaned-up API with fixed use-after-free crashes. Uno Platform is a co-maintainer alongside Microsoft's .NET team, meaning faster issue resolution and a predictable release cadence tied to Chrome's Skia milestones. Uno Platform users can opt in by setting the SkiaSharpVersion MSBuild property to 4.148.0. The next preview (4.150.0 Preview 2) is already available and introduces the Graphite next-gen GPU backend.

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most YouTube video ads, including pre-roll and mid-roll ads, across iOS, Mac, and Windows by default. Android users must enable it manually in Settings. The feature uses community-maintained filter lists from uBlock Origin, supplemented by DuckDuckGo's own compatibility rules. It works separately from the existing Duck Player feature, and both can be used simultaneously. DuckDuckGo joins Brave and Opera in offering built-in YouTube ad blocking without third-party extensions. Minor buffering delays may occur, and the feature may occasionally break as YouTube changes its ad-serving methods.

SkiaSharp 4.0 is now stable, marking the biggest release in years for the cross-platform rendering library that underpins .NET MAUI, WinUI 3, and Uno Platform. Built on Google's Skia engine (which also powers Chrome and Android), SkiaSharp provides a single GPU-accelerated, pixel-perfect rendering API across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and WebAssembly. Version 4.0 brings the native engine current through Skia milestone m148 (28 upstream milestones), a reworked object lifecycle that eliminates use-after-free crashes, variable font support, color font palettes, animated WebP encoding, and up to 24% faster GPU rendering (30% for Uno Platform apps). Uno Platform is now a formal co-maintainer alongside Microsoft's .NET team, ensuring predictable release cadence