December 2025

Time for another monthly post sharing some of the IT discoveries that crossed my path lately. Below you'll find a mix of articles, links, and resources, some of which tie into my current activities and areas of interest.

Some thoughts

AI House: Learning with Google

I recently checked out the AI House event, which focused on getting the most out of AI coding assistants with Google. It's fascinating to see how the ecosystem is evolving and how we can leverage these tools more effectively in our daily workflows. I am currently exploring the Antigravity IDE, so it was interesting to get some first-hand tips straight from Google.

AI House

Tool pvolok/mprocs

TUI for running multiple processes

I found this nifty tool for managing development environments where you need to run several commands simultaneously—like backend servers, frontend builders, and watchers—within a single terminal window.

I’ve started using it in my blog's Makefile to run the server and handle content hot-reloading, which makes local debugging much smoother.

Articles

How WebSockets Work: A Deep Dive into Real-Time Communication

Understand what WebSockets are, why they were invented, how the handshake works, and where real-time communication truly matters. Learn use cases, pros & cons, and when NOT to use WebSockets.

Double Booking Problem: System Design Solutions | ITNEXT

Learn how Airbnb and Ticketmaster prevent double bookings using pessimistic locking, optimistic locking, and distributed systems at massive scale.

The way I run standup meetings

I'm not a big fan of Scrum, but I really like the idea of having regular short meetings with all team members.

Your Job Is Not Your Career - by Steve Huynh

Stop giving 100% to your employer

Future-proofing your Software Engineering career

Practical strategies for engineering careers in the future

Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work

AI generated summary

The article emphasizes the responsibility of software developers to deliver code that is proven to work, highlighting the importance of both manual and automated testing. It criticizes the practice of submitting untested code and discusses the role of coding agents in 2025, while stressing the need for human accountability.

The Bubble Is Labor | Daniel Miessler

The real disruption isn't AI spending—it's the elimination of the labor side of the capital-labor equation

Practical Guide to Git Worktree - DEV Community

Git has a solution to all of our problems, you just need to know where to look. As developers,... Tagged with github, productivity, tutorial, programming.

Oya Studio - Better than JSON

AI generated summary

The article explains why the author prefers Protocol Buffers over JSON for APIs, citing Protobuf's efficiency, strong typing, and binary serialization as key advantages, despite JSON's popularity and human-readability.

Bloom filters: the niche trick behind a 16× faster API | Blog | incident.io

This post is a deep dive into how we improved the P95 latency of an API endpoint from 5s to 0.3s using a niche little computer science trick called a bloom filter.

Introduction to the Architecture Decision Canvas: Making better architecture decisions together

A visual, collaborative technique for decision-making in software architecture. With the Architecture Decision Canvas you can coordinate teams, weigh up options and work on decisions.

Use Git Like a Senior Engineer

Master version control with strategies, workflows, and habits that separate junior devs from seasoned pros.

What Actually Makes You Senior – Terrible Software

The one skill that separates senior engineers from everyone else isn't technical. It's the ability to take ambiguous problems and make them concrete.Retry

Burnout ≠ Working Too Much – Terrible Software

Burnout often stems from a lack of purpose and agency, not just workload. Empowering teams with meaningful tasks and autonomy fosters motivation and connection to their work.

AI

GitHub - addyosmani/gemini-cli-tips

Gemini CLI Tips and Tricks.

Production-Ready AI with Google Cloud Learning Path | Google Cloud Blog

Learn how to take your AI projects from prototype to production with the Production-Ready AI with Google Cloud Learning Path. This free series covers security, infrastructure, monitoring, and tools like Gemini models, Vertex AI, GKE, and Cloud Run.

A Month of Chat-Oriented Programming - CheckEagle

The article discusses the author's experiences using Claude, an AI tool, for a month in a chat-oriented programming (CHOP) approach. The author describes various challenges and observations, such as Claude's eagerness to write code, its tendency to make tests pass by altering them, and its disobedience to explicit instructions. Despite these issues, the author acknowledges the productivity boost Claude provides when it works well. The article also highlights the importance of asking Claude for concerns, enforcing coding standards, and the peculiar effectiveness of swearing at Claude to get its attention. The author concludes that while Claude has its flaws, it can be a valuable tool when used collaboratively and with proper guidance.

My first win building with agents | olano.dev

I built a small web app almost exclusively with Claude Code. My previous attempt at coding with agents had made me sick, but this time I felt empowered. What changed?

Anthropic's Vision Advantage is a Lot Like Apple's from the 2010s | Daniel Miessler

AI generated summary

Anthropic is likened to Apple in the 2010s, focusing on a cohesive ecosystem rather than just AI models. Their Claude Code emphasizes user empathy and context management, offering a vision-led approach that aligns with user needs, similar to Apple's strategy.

Claude CLI deleted my entire home directory! Wiped my whole mac. : ClaudeAI

I was having the Claude CLI clean up my packages in an old repo, and it nuked my whole Mac! What the hell? Has anyone ever had this happen? I’m...

AI Makes Everyone Average. Here Is The Simple Antidote.

Why the annoying stuff is your new advantage

How to Build Your First ChatGPT App

Take advantage of 800 million weekly active users. Build an app that gets in front of millions of people.

How to Use Google's Gemini CLI for AI Code Assistance – Real Python

Learn how to use Gemini CLI to bring Google's AI-powered coding assistance directly into your terminal to help you analyze and fix code.

🍌 Testing Gemini 3 Pro Image

“Gemini 3 Pro Image” (aka Nano Banana Pro 🍌) just launched (in preview) and is the new state-of-the-art image generation/editing model.

How I Use Every Claude Code Feature - by Shrivu Shankar

A brain dump of all the ways I've been using Claude Code.

Writing a good CLAUDE.md | HumanLayer Blog

CLAUDE.md is a high-leverage configuration point for Claude Code. Learning how to write a good CLAUDE.md (or AGENTS.md) is a key skill for agent-enabled software engineering.

Nano Banana can be prompt engineered for extremely nuanced AI image generation | Max Woolf's Blog

Nano Banana allows 32,768 input tokens and I’m going to try to use them all dammit.

Gemini multimedia library - Google for Startups

Accelerate your startup's growth with Google AI. Explore how-to videos, innovative use cases, and practical resources on the Gemini multimedia library.

Field Notes From Shipping Real Code With Claude

Vibe Coding Isn’t Just a Vibe

Keep the Robots Out of the Gym | Daniel Miessler

We have to be very careful about what we ask AI to help us with

Python

Modern Python monorepo for Apache Airflow Ⓡ — Part 1 - Jare Potiuk

Modern Python monorepo for Apache Airflow Ⓡ — Part 1 Part 1. Pains of big modular Python projects This series of blog posts post describes the journey of devex and development and packaging …

Django vs. FastAPI, An Honest Comparison

After many years of working with Django, I decided to take a closer and more serious look at FastAPI.

🚀 How To Deploy Django 6 On Ubuntu VPS - VPS Hosting Blog | Dedicated Servers | Reseller Hosting

Below is a detailed, production-ready guide for How to Deploy Django 6 on Ubuntu VPS.

Build a RAG App With Django MongoDB Backend in 30 minutes - DEV Community

The festive holidays are upon us. This is the time for deep reflections, catching up with family and... Tagged with django, python, rag, webdev.

Django RAPID architecture

A curated collection of patterns and idioms for successful, maintainable and robust Django codebases

A first look at Django's new background tasks | Roam*notes

Django 6.0 introduces a built-in background tasks framework in django.tasks. But don't expect to phase out Celery, Huey or other preferred solutions just yet.

Django: what’s new in 6.0 - Adam Johnson

Django 6.0 was released today, starting another release cycle for the loved and long-lived Python web framework (now 20 years old!). It comes with a mosaic of new features, contributed to by many, some of which I am happy to have helped with. Below is my pick of highlights from the release notes.

Python libraries

GitHub - Maxteabag/sqlit

A user friendly TUI for SQL databases. Written in python. Supports SQL server, Mysql, PostreSQL and SQLite, Turso and more.

Tools

GitHub - anonfaded/FadCam

Open-source, ad-free Android multimedia recorder with background video recording, screen recording, live streaming, and remote camera control

Cloud

cloud-init - The standard for customising cloud instances

The standard for customising cloud instances

You Want Microservices—But Do You Need Them? | Docker

Before you default to microservices, weigh hidden costs and consider a modular monolith or SOA. Learn when Docker delivers consistency and scale—without sprawl.

How we built a 130,000-node GKE cluster | Google Cloud Blog

Learn about the architectural innovations we used to build a 130,000-node Kubernetes cluster, and the trends driving demand for these environments.

Other stuff

Daniel Stenberg -- Emails

This page provides an index of emails with their corresponding numbers and dates. The list starts from March 21, 2009, and goes up to December 18, 2025. Each entry in the index is numbered sequentially and includes the date of the email. The page does not provide the content of the emails, only the metadata such as the date and the sequence number.

On Bullshit

On Bullshit is a 1986 essay and 2005 book by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication.

codejack: December 2025 mix

December mix from codejack

Podcasts

Google Cloud Tech: The Agent Factory

Welcome to The Agent Factory, a podcast that goes beyond the hype and dives into building production ready AI agents. Join hosts Shir Meir Lador and Ivan as they help developers navigate the world of agentic AI.

Videos

Episode 1709 Scott Adams: Today I Explain How To Persuade Putin And, Separately, Cure Your Laziness

Content:

whiteboard1: why self-Help Works

switchblade drone warfare

watching elon musk reengineer Twitter

The potential of avatars with AI and Meta

CNN S.E. Cupp article critical of Obama