The Alchemist Blog
Curated insights on Code, Design, and Digital Products.
Top Stories
The Cost of Complexity: Why I'm Moving Away from Global State
6 min
Bridging the Gap: A Designer’s Guide to Git
5 min
Case Study: Migrating a Legacy Monolith to Next.js
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Technology
React Native vs. Native: A Pragmatic Comparison
I love React Native, but it's not a magic bullet. Identifying the specific use cases where 'going native' is still the correct business choice.
TypeScript: Moving Beyond 'Any'
Using 'any' is technical debt. A guide to using Generics and Utility types to make your codebase actually type-safe.
Accessibility is an Engineering Problem, Not Just Design
ARIA labels are a band-aid. True accessibility comes from semantic HTML and proper keyboard focus management.
Why I Still Use CSS Modules in a Tailwind World
Tailwind is efficient, but sometimes you need separation of concerns. A look at hybrid approaches to styling.
Server Components: The Mental Model Shift
React Server Components (RSC) aren't just about performance. They change how we think about the boundary between backend and frontend.
Artificial Intelligence
AI as a Junior Developer, Not a Replacement
Copilot generates code, but it doesn't understand your business logic. Integrating LLMs into a team requires a shift in code review culture.
The Ethics of RAG: Data Privacy in Enterprise AI
Retrieval-Augmented Generation allows AI to read your documents. But who else is reading them? Navigating the privacy minefield.
UI/UX Design
Case Studies
Case Study: The Dashboard That Was Too Crowded
The client wanted 'everything above the fold'. Here is how we used progressive disclosure to satisfy the client and the users.
Case Study: Scaling a Node.js API During Black Friday
We thought we were ready. Then traffic spiked 400%. How caching strategies and database pooling saved the weekend.
