Ben Bachem

After enforcing this in the langfuse codebase for a bit, I decided to write down my thoughts on React components that conditionally hide themselves: www.benbachem.de/blog/vanishi...

As I've been thinking more about maintaining AI-written code, I've taken some time to write down some of my thoughts on my favorite React pattern. www.benbachem.de/blog/connect...

Had a conversation about this yesterday and I find it crazy how little is actually happening to improve code readability and audibility. Sure, there is A LOT going on and things like x.com/rough__sea/s... are interesting but I feel the topic is dwarfed in comparison to just generating more code.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2w6...

When cursor cloud agents work, they are really nice, but they are so unreliable...

Late summer is the best 🤩

I just stumbled upon a quote that I wrote down in my notes when I watched the end of This Is Us back in January. And while it’s cliche and melodramatic, I needed to hear this today so I thought I’d share the original clip. Maybe someone else likes it too: youtu.be/J9geEY276-8?...

LLMs are good at making things work when they're broken. I've yet to find a model that will step back and look for ways to avoid similar problems in the future.

I love that there‘s a vote for the new EU currency designs. I just completed the survey, here’s the link: surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro/

Just found difit. Looks super useful: yoshiko-pg.github.io/difit/

I'm constantly amazed by how difficult it is to get coding agents to write good React code. I have to constantly fight codex to not add useEffect and refs everywhere.

I took some time to write down my experience switching from Backblaze Personal Backup to resticprofile with a Hetzner Storage Box as a backend. www.benbachem.de/blog/backbla...

I've been test driving grepika and tilth MCP servers today based on reading blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2026/05/ai-t... and so far I'm pretty happy with them

As someone who is contributing to both local-first and atproto I am delighted to see these communities moving closer together. We have a lot of principles and values in common

Looks like a bunch of the anti-AI posts on Bluesky are bots themselves? What is happening lol.

I thought this was common knowledge, but with so much new React code being vibe coded I think there is room to reiterate some fundamentals. Therefore, I wrote this small blog post a few days ago: www.benbachem.de/blog/classna...

I started a new job this week and so far the experience has been great! The experience of diving into a _huge_ unknown React codebase, that does a lot of things differently from how I am used to, is a bit of a challenge though.

After 5 1/2 years and ~5,000 commits, today is my last day at @ superchat.com. I joined when we had 0 customers and an empty office. We grew to 9,000+ and became the DACH market leader. Incredibly proud of what we built. Excited for what's next — more on that soon. 🎢

Since ESLint 10 is out, I decided to finally reserve some time to migrate from ESLint 8 to 9 @work. This definitely is a whole lot of work...

Just finished the audiobook. Really enjoyed it, especially the earlier chapters.

I just published a new blog post www.benbachem.de/blog/typescr...

Seriously, who needs a caps lock key?

The storybook vitest addon is absolutely incredible. storybook.js.org/docs/writing...

Engaging in mental gymnastics to justify what's convenient but unevidenced, unjust but personally beneficial, 'rewires your neural map' in ways that degrade your overall ability to understand and analyze the world around you, which is a precondition for intelligence and creativity.

Capitalism to me implies antitrust and strong regulators. It also does not imply anti labor rights, but equity for employees and workers. I am however strongly against dividing employers and employees in groups that should fight against each other. Nothing good comes from that.

I spent way to much time yesterday fighting the borrow checker over something I _knew_ shouldn’t work. Safe so say, it won.

I started listening to the audiobook version of „Proto“ a few days ago and both the content and narration is absolutely enchanting www.audible.com/pd/Proto-Aud...

I know it's a vanity metric and doesn't mean anything, still proud of 4k+ GitHub contributions in 2025.

Copilot one-shotted a custom ESLint rule for me a few days ago and then one-shotted the fix command with a second prompt, I just had to write the test cases. IMO lowering the effort / cost of custom ESLint functions could lead to much more consistent code, so I'm very exited about it!

Shoutout to this absolute GEM ✨ of a vscode extension github.com/71/dance

I feel stupid for only realizing yesterday that you can run git clone and git push against any machine addressable via SSH without any custom software running on it 🤯

Have expertise with functional programming, interpreters, and Web technology? Like Rust, wasm, etc.? Looking for a job with a great team (like @adamchalmers.com )? Please see this job ad, and share with others you might know! zoo.dev/jobs/4619187...

ai.. automated intern

We should make more stuff that’s not crap

I think upgrading to IOS 26 was a mistake 🥲

Just wrote a parameterized test in Kotlin for the first time. Being able to simply reference a method to generate all the test cases is quite handy 👌