Everyone in my network...software engineers, content creators, students, and business people feels like they are lagging behind.

But why? Why do we have this fear? The short answer, which everyone says nowadays, is social media. And the simple solution is not to use it.

However, I want to dig deeper into why we have this fear in the first place. Today, it’s social media. Tomorrow, it can be something else. Finding the core issue will have more potential to get it fixed.

If you ask any big YouTuber today (which most youngster aspire to be) what their biggest fear is, they will answer along the lines of “Being Relevant”, which means staying up to date on what’s happening around all the time which creates an underlying fear of falling behind.

Let’s see how we can fix it.

Build Self Awareness

Consuming social media is harmful because its amplifies fear and anxiety. That’s because we humans give more importance to those feelings, and it is inbuilt since we lived in caves.

“Power resides where a man thinks it resides.” - Game of Thrones

The majority of life’s problems are emotional problems. Everything is inside our heads. The world remains as it is, the only difference how our mind perceives it.

The first thing is to identify why these feelings are emerging in ourself. If we have this knowledge, then fixing it become easy.

Nobody can describe an exact solution for this. This is a “self-awareness” problem. Because my fear of dogs would sound stupid to you if you are a dog lover. My point here is do a lot of self-reflection to build self awareness.

Tech Moves Faster Than Ever

Even if you don’t use social media, you can’t escape this reality. Moore’s Law is in full swing. Computers are getting smaller and smarter every year, and AI has made that a lot faster. Every day a new model is released, solving all the past problems.

The AI workflow and automation I created last week is now less efficient than the one released today.

The rate of change in tech is a classic Pareto 80/20 principle at play:

• Over the last 21 centuries, 90% of progress happened in the last 200 years

• Within those 200 years, 80% of progress happened in the last 40 years

That is the speed of change in tech.

So what’s the solution here? Focus more on outcomes. Focus on tools that improve your outcomes on bigger picture. For example, Ask yourself while creating document using AI that:

• Does this documentation improve team communication?

• Does it help the organization onboard someone new using that document?

• Or is it just another document lying around?

Keeping this perspective will allow you to focus only on necessary tools which create outcomes and discard everything else.

Our Brain’s Capacity is Limited

The human brain is designed to be creative, to think up ideas, and not to store information. For that we’ve books, and now hard drives.

Creativity comes from the free space in the mind. Our brain consumes information, then wanders off into different thoughts and builds creative connections between those thoughts, which we then implement it.

If we keep absorbing new information all the time, the brain won’t a have space to do that.

And there is a limit to it. On average, our brain can do deep work for only 3-4 hours a day. If we flood that time with new information every minute, the brain will start to rot and feel tired. And when we are tired, all the negativity creeps in.

Trivia : “brain-rot” has been the highest-searched word in 2026.

Like the body, our brain requires cognitive fitness, something I’ve adopted...inspired by a Cal Newport video and have poster on it on my wall

.

Know The Difference Between an Influencer and a Teacher

Examples of Teachers that come to my mind are Andrej Karpathy and Andrew Ng. Whenever I watch their videos, I end up learning something new rather than feeling behind or anxious. Their incentive is to improve and share knowledge. Educate people.

Influencers (I’m not going to name them) have incentives tied to views, likes, and comments, so they design their content accordingly. Their titles will be along the lines of “If you don’t do this NOW you will be replaced.”

My simple way to identify the difference is to notice how I feel after watching their content. Does it make me feel “Oh, that’s interesting” or “Oh my god, what is happening”?

And If it’s later than it’s an influencer.

Who is one teacher (not an influencer) that leaves you feeling smarter rather than anxious? Drop their name in the comments.

Leave a comment

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. IC Work Is the New Career Flex by Elena Verna

I do agree that managers’ roles will be scrutinized more. Organizations will demand more IC work from them. However, we will still need managers because we humans need that kind of hierarchy; without it, we will keep losing direction. We need someone to cross-correct. This article has some really strong points, but it seems like it’s selling an idea that you don’t need managers at all, which I don’t agree with.

2. Smarter Tools, Dumber Us by Darshan Pania

The only defense is the unsexy one: take accountability. Learn the thing. Read the docs. Use the smaller model to change the variable. Question the output. Notice when AI is filling a gap you should be filling yourself.

The illusion of intelligence is comfortable. Real intelligence rarely is.

3. The Last Software Engineer by Kent C. Dodds

I resonate with most of the sentiments in this article. As I’ve mentioned before, we currently require more product engineers who comprehend the business domain and can decide what to build without being overly concerned about how to build it.

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📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Building Pi in a World of Slop — Mario Zechner

Funny and on the point about why AI agents suck and produce a lot of slop.

2. I Started Using Stacked PRs - Now I Can’t Go Back

Recently, I discovered that GitHub introduced Stacked PRs. I watched a video but couldn’t grasp its purpose. The video explained the importance of Stacked PRs and how they are used. I believe this is particularly beneficial for full-stack developers making changes across multiple microservices or different tech stacks, including backend, frontend, or infrastructure.

Share

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Using Claude Code: Session Management & 1M Context

I haven’t used rewind much, but now it makes more sense when AI makes a mistake or wrong assumption. It’s better to go back and start from there.

2. Last week, I hit rock bottom. I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy

Leave a comment

📦 Code for Packages

1. Prince-Mukunzi/screend

Local-first screenshot organization daemon for macOS.

Watches for screenshots, OCRs them, intelligently renames them, categorizes them, and indexes everything for instant search. Optionally uses Ollama for AI-powered analysis.

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Seriesgraph

😂 Fun and Memes

1. AI Will Replace Dancer

2. Patatap is a portable animation and sound kit

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

When I got my first job in 2015 after being jobless for a year, Within 3 months in the company I realized that job security is a myth.

Watching other developers’ “This is unexpected” reactions to AI layoffs feels surprising to me. It seems they were thinking that their job is safe.

Layoffs are bad. Being jobless is bad. But believing your job will be safe for years is really bad. It create an illusion of security.

The hard truth is that anyone can fire you at any time. Business and Market fluctuates all the time. You can get laid off even when it’s not your fault. You did the best but still got laid off.

I am not saying to stay in fear of losing your job all the time, but to prepare for it. Make yourself valuable by adapting and upskilling. But the question is, how do you do that?

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that its boring. But the good news is that it has been working for decades and still works. Here is the list based on my experience.

1. Understand the product from a business perspective. What to build matters more than how to build it.

2. Try a lot of things. Explore widely to build your taste and gut feeling.

3. Master the fundamentals. Frameworks and languages come and go. Software design principles don’t. And design principles matter more than ever.

4. Communicate well. Read and write as much as you can. It’s the best cognitive fitness routine for the mind.

5. Take accountability and ownership of everything you do.

6. Learn how to get things done. Generating Ideas is easy. Execution is hard.

However, the current state of concern for software engineers is AI. But we need to understand that AI is just a tool. And like any other tool, the value of any tool comes from the person using it.

The real survival strategy is simpler than it sounds: develop your competence, stay visible, keep applying, and wait for luck and timing to align. When a good opportunity comes, even if you are not ready, take it. If things do not work out, move on and try again.

💼 Jobs to Apply:

Mobile Staff Software Engineer by Nubank (Brazil)

The Mobile Platform’s mission aligns with Nubank’s commitment to delivering the best experience for our customers by ensuring a high-performing, stable, and seamless app.

Within Mobile Platform, focuses on providing user-friendly, scalable, high-performing, and cost-efficient app infrastructure components and mobile tools that enable Nubank engineers to quickly and safely test, deploy, monitor, analyze, and improve app flows and features.

Salary : NA

✍🏻 Articles to read

1. Drunk Post- Things I’ve Learned as a Senior Engineer by “luminousmen”

Being a good engineer means knowing best practices. Being a senior engineer means knowing when to break best practices.

People die. Do you want your code to be your legacy? If yes, then spend a lot of time on it because that’s your fucking legacy and you go! But if you are like me, your legacy is surrounded with family, friends, and people in your life and not the code you write. So don’t get too hung up on it.

I got into tech and coding because tech was my hobby. Now my hobby is is the same as work and work has ruined my hobby. So now if I want to enjoy tech I need to quit my hobby. Or I need to be OK that tech is no longer my hobby and find new hobbies.

2. Ghostty Is Leaving GitHub by “Mitchell Hashimoto”

Something is changing on GitHub. There are many outage issues, and individuals such as Mitchell, who hosts Ghostty, are now leaving GitHub.

3. 35 Simple Health Tips Experts Swear By by “Amanda Schupak”

Often when I’m feeling mentally foggy, I use the 10-10-10 rule: Take a 10-second break every 10 minutes to stare at something 10 feet away. This not only helps reduce eye strain from screen time, but the brief mental break can help boost your focus and refresh your cognitive clarity.

Patients, family members and friends often ask me for advice about how to best avoid infections in their lives. My top answer is a simple and no-brainer recommendation: Wash your hands with soap and water. Remember that 20 seconds is optimal.

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📺 Videos to Watch

1. It Ain’t Broke- Why Software Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever — Matt Pocock, AI Hero Mattpocockuk

I’ve share before that software fundamentals are the most essential skills we need right now. No matter how advanced AI becomes or how good the code it writes is, you have to be the judge of it.

You must ensure that the code and the design, which are done based on the project context, are easy to understand.The best practices and everything we have been using for the last 20 years revolve around this principle.

Make sure that you spend time on your fundamentals and leverage AI using those fundamentals.

2. Hands-on Air With Dmitry Jemerov and Grigorii Kargin

I am a big IntelliJ fan, and I have been using it for the last 10 years. They launched “Air,” an agentic workflow IDE similar to OpenCode. I don’t have to learn a new tool. 😃

3. Your Mac Is Missing All of These

I found Copytist, Dockdoor, and Fluxmarkdown useful.

Share

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Ask HN- What Skills Are Future Proof in an AI Driven Job Market?

2. What 7 Months of Marketing CursorClip Taught Me About Growing an Indie Product

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. UnTrap for YouTube

2. Video Editor

3. Create the Hook You Imagine.

Leave a comment

😂 Fun and Memes

1. AI Chatbots- Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

2. musicForProgramming();

3. It’s not just new, it’s newspeak

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

I really hate audio messages, especially WhatsApp voice notes. Because...

• They’re not searchable

• No transcript to skim

• You have to rewind and listen to the whole audio just to find one important bit

• You can’t listen or reply in public

• Senders just ramble with unnecessary fillers like “um,” “like,” “you know”

And it might seem like sending audio is faster, but in reality:

• Glancing at text is faster than listening

• Text forces people to think before they send, so only what matters comes through

But things have changed now.

AI tools make it easy to convert audio into clean, readable text in real time. They preserve your tone, fix your spelling, understand your style, and even format things into bullet points based on how you naturally speak.

One of my favorite tools for this is Wispr Flow. I use it all day long. You can see from my usage insights that most of my time goes into AI prompting. Because AI responds better to detailed, descriptive input compare to short one-liners.

When I talk, I naturally explain things more into detail and repeat myself more compare to writing. And that actually helps the AI. Wispr Flow captures all of that and turns it into clean text instantly.

Once I have the text, I can paste it anywhere and use my Raycast AI Command to polish it further by shortening sentences, restructuring the flow, or turning it into a list. The combination of these two tools has made writing significantly faster.

For anything more thoughtful, like a long-form essay or a detailed post, I take the transcript and spend a bit of time editing and refining it. That’s exactly how this mini blog is written.

If you’re not using a voice-to-text AI tool yet, you’re missing out. The barrier to writing more and writing better has never been lower.

Also, building a voice AI agent is much easier now with tools like Pipecat, if you’re a developer.

What’s your current voice-to-text setup? Or what’s stopping you from trying one? Would love to hear in the comments.

Leave a comment

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Favorite hidden and under-utilized features in Claude Code

Subscribe now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Navigating the Hard Parts of Testing in Flutter by Majid Hajian

I have previously mentioned that testing in Flutter, not only in dart but in any programming language, can be challenging due to time zone and locale issues. This blog post delves into these challenges, particularly the Async feature.

2. The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code by Ally Piechowski

Finding defects in a codebase using Git history even before you go through the codebase.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. How to Build an AI Voice Agent Using Pipecat (feat. Daily.co, Twilio, Recall, Tavus, Flutter)

In this video, I am sharing how we can build real-time voice and video AI agents with Pipecat for anything. By integrating third-party AI services like OpenAI, Cartesia, Twilio, Tavus, Daily.co, and Recall, I will also explain my system for handling low-latency audio orchestration, integrating custom tools like Google Calendar, and syncing real-time UI updates using Firebase.

2. Claude Design- Everything You Can Build in 16 Minutes

Claude AI is position to revolutionize the knowledge workspace. And its a the best option to choose as your AI tool. Not because it has the best coding model (it obviously does) but because it builds all new features in its products from all its competitors in weeks 😃

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📚 Quotes From Books

📦 Code from Packages

1. Graphify

An AI coding assistant skill. Type /graphify in Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, VS Code Copilot Chat, Aider, OpenClaw, Factory Droid, Trae, Hermes, Kiro, or Google Antigravity - it reads your files, builds a knowledge graph, and gives you back structure you didn't know was there. Understand a codebase faster. Find the "why" behind architectural decisions.

1. Flutter Skills

The repository “flutter/skills” contains agent skills for Flutter, offering various functionalities like accessibility audits, integration testing, widget previews, architecture best practices, responsive layout building, JSON serialization, routing setup, localization, and HTTP package usage. Instructions for installation, updating, and contributing are provided.

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Ask HN- Do You Have Any Evidence That Agentic Coding Works?

2. Where’s My Disk Space? / What Is Taking Up All the Space on My Mac?

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Xykong/flux-markdown

2. Vocal Remover and Isolation

2. I can’t go back to the regular YouTube UI after this 😅

😂Fun and Memes

1. Mesmerizing book

2. How to Lose Brain Fat With This Programming Language!

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

AI research has been going on for the last 25 years, and the majority of their focus was to solve medical problems. In the “The Thinking Game” documentary, you will see their sole focus was the protein folding problem.

The reason was simple: the medical field has many unsolved problems and a large market. Solving these issues can have a significant impact on humanity, making it easy to pitch to investors.

So what happened? Why did it suddenly start impacting software engineering?

The short answer is, they found a product market fit by discovery.

When ChatGPT was launched, it was initially marketed as an AI chatbot. They soon realized that software engineers were using it and asking programming questions, and it was solving those problems in a reasonable manner. That’s when they knew there was a huge market for AI in the software engineering space.

That’s when the whole “software engineers will be replaced” narrative kicked off, because those were the people who adopted it the fastest.

Here is my hypothesis on why it happened:

1. Programming languages are deterministic. : Normal language is not deterministic. A word in english can mean multiple different things depending on context. For example, “class” in English can mean a teaching, a hierarchy in people, coolness, etc. But in a programming language, “class” only means one thing. So the probability of getting things correct in programming languages is high compared to normal languages.

2. Open source gave a ton of training data. : There was just a lot of code, documentation, discussion forums, and blogs available on the internet to train on, compared to medical and other fields.

3. Software engineering already had the right tools. : If you ask an AI agent to do something, it can use Bash, Linux tools, grep, git to track history and changed files. API systems and documentation — all of that was already there. The agent can just hook into it. This is not true for other industries.

4. Software engineers were the closest users. : The AI tools were mostly built by software developers. Their day-to-day experience made the tools way more friendly for that use case. They were the most hands-on users, so they basically shaped what got trained and improved. Also, software engineering is a field where any new technology is adopted the fastest compared to others.

What do you think — was this just a happy accident, or was software engineering always going to be where AI landed first? Would love to hear your take in the comments.

Leave a comment

💡Tips and Tricks:

1. If you own a Mac, do yourself a favor

Subscribe now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Shell Tricks That Actually Make Life Easier by Larvitz Blog

After reading all these tricks in the shell, I feel that I was doing a lot of manual work. These keyboard shortcut in shells has really improved my efficiency and productivity.

2. Some Things Just Take Time by Armin Ronacher

Good things take time, as the quote on my keyboard mat reminds me. It’s important to understand the difference between trying things out methodically compare to gambling on them. Rather than labeling our actions as experiments, we often rely on luck rather than informed decisions. Some things simply require patience and time.

3. The Self-Help Trap- What 20+ Years of “Optimizing” Has Taught Me by Tim Ferriss

I used to be so focused on self-improvement that I would read blogs during movie intervals because I believed every moment was crucial, and I wanted to utilize that time for personal growth. It was beneficial for a few years, but then things took a negative turn.
Everything became too stressful; activities I once enjoyed turned into a relentless pursuit of productivity. Regardless of what I did, I always aimed to perfect and optimize it in every possible way.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Claude Code Just Automated My Video Production

Remotion with Claude is a great tech combo to create a simple graphic animation to make your presentation videos better.

2. How to Take Notes Like the Top 1% of Students

This is exactly why I don’t think AI taking notes in a meeting works. It just transcribes things and adds too much detail. It doesn’t give us time to think about what’s important and relevant for us.
So here is my key takeaway:

• Try to take handwritten notes, as it’s easier to draw and make quick changes compared to digital notes.

• Use rapid logging to jot down only important information.

• Make sure to revisit your notes.

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📚 Quotes From Books

😂 Fun and Memes

1. AI CEO vs Engineer (2026).

We have slides that say AI is gonna completely disrupt the industry in two years. We update those slides every two years.

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

Humans want to have total control over things. Hence, we seek more predictable outcomes. And since the world is unpredictable, having more options feels like the logical way to be predictable and safe.

But this is exactly the problem of today’s generation. They can be a YouTuber, an Instagram influencer, a software engineer, a designer. They can be anything they want. They have 10 to 15 career options in front of them and they are more confused about which one to pick.

Another problem with having more options is that it also stops you from focusing on one thing for a long period of time. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport describes that it took Newton 15–20 years to come up with gravity. Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master one skill.

The reason why we want to focus on one thing for so long is that there will always be a phase called the “dip” — where you feel frustrated, nothing works, and you get bored.

During that time, if you have more options, you can easily switch to another one. More options allow you to quit easily. And this is not a feature; it’s a bug.

I’ve also seen this with friends and colleagues. They start a business or career, and as soon as it gets difficult, they transition to their family’s business or use father money to start something completely different. They have the option, so they take it and quit quickly.

People with no options don’t have that choice (including me 😊). They just have to grind through that “dip” phase, and most of the time they come out the other side in a much better place.

A good example of this is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the GOT prequel. It’s a short 30-minute, 6-episode series. The director had a very low budget and couldn’t do the big battle scenes like those in Game of Thrones. But within those constraints, with fewer options, they made the best of what they had — and the show turned out really well. It has near-perfect 10 IMDB ratings, which sparked the GOT and Breaking Bad fan war. 😂

So if you have multiple options, I can’t guarantee you’ll come out better. But if you have fewer options and stay focused on one thing for a longer period of time, you will come out as definitely a better person.

I’m curious — have you ever been in a situation where having too many options made things harder for you? Or do you think more options are always better? Let me know in the comments.

Leave a comment

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Senior Product Engineer (Flutter, GCP)

In the last year Visible has grown from 15 to 30 people, adding a data science team, Lead PM, Comms and Policy Lead, Director of Clinical Affairs and Research, and more. Our product foundations are strong, the mobile app and other systems are in good condition, and now we’re looking for a Senior Product Engineer to help us go further.

Salary Range: £88,000 - £100,000 annually

Subscribe now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Riverpod Best Practices You’re Probably Missing by Majid Hajian

I use Riverpod in every new project, and it is really valuable. I think all these issues described here, If we had known this earlier, we could have avoided a lot of pitfalls, rebuilds, and bugs. I highly recommend going through this if you are using Riverpod as a starter in your projects.

2. Willingness to Look Stupid Is a Genuine Moat in Creative Work by sharif.io

Every day, I post new content. Despite my fear that it may look foolish or it will not resonate with people, I still keep doing it because I feel compelled to share my ideas.

I share through short blogs, YouTube videos, and this newsletter to organize my thoughts and share them with the world, hoping that someone will appreciate them someday.

3. 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation by hanselman

1. Have a Reset Strategy (One-Click)

2. Know Your Affectations (Ssssssseriously)

3. Know When To Move and When To Not Move (Red light!)

4. For the Love of All That Is Holy, FONT SIZE, People (See that?)

5. Speak their Language (Know the Audience)

6. Be Utterly Prepared (No excuses)

7. CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT (Have some)

8. System Setup (Be unique, but don’t be nuts)

9. Speaking (Um…)

10. Advancing Slides (No lasers!)

11. Care (deeply)

4. Taste for Makers by Paul Graham

After the AI boom, I believe that mediocre work is a thing of the past. What truly matters now is you, your style, and your taste. Your taste is distinctive to you, and to discover it, you must experiment with a variety of things to see what resonates with you. I enjoy Paul Graham’s lengthy essays, and this one particularly resonated with me.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. IntelliJ IDEA- The Documentary | an Origin Story

My first impression of IntelliJ was through Android Studio. I like JetBrains for a few reasons:

1. They’re not dependent on VC funding and have been profitable for 25 years.

2. They have great refactoring tools, shortcuts, and plugin support.

3. I only got to know these tools after trying them with an open-source license, and I realized how good they are.

4. They have different tool for each problem. For web development, I like WebStorm; for Python, it’s PyCharm; and for data management, DataGrip. All these tools do their jobs really well.

AI is changing things quickly, making it tough for companies without a lot of money to adapt. I understand JetBrains is taking a slow approach to AI, but I hope they come out stronger since they have a great product mindset. I tried Cursor (forked VS Code) last year but ended up back with IntelliJ.

The JetBrains CEO mentioned the documentary that they’re in the middle of a tornado, needing to keep a safe distance, but also not being way to far.

2. Chip Huyen- Building When It Feels Like There’s Nothing Left to Build - The Pragmatic Summit

I have read Chip’s AI engineering book, and it’s really great. To summarize this talk: we are now living in a world where the question is not “How to build,” but “What to build,” and also “Enjoy building that.”

3. 4 Things Nobody Tells You About AI

It’s good to see Tiago address contradictions in AI. I agree that despite having time, we feel compelled to use these tools to stay competitive. These tools often serve as sales and marketing tactics for AI companies. While I use an AI tool, I am not in a rush or under pressure.

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📦 Code from Packages

1. Auto Updater

This plugin allows Flutter desktop apps to automatically update themselves (based on sparkle and winsparkle).

Subscribe now

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Standing Out in 2026

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. US Job Market Visualizer

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

OpenClaw created history in tech by becoming a full-fledged product from a side project in a matter of a few days. It became so popular that it changed its name three times. It went viral and became:

• The highest starred project on GitHub in a short time, surpassing Linux.

• Peter was invited to all major podcasts, including Lex Fridman

• YouTube was filled with automation use case videos with OpenClaw

• And finally, OpenAI hired Peter.

And yet, I haven’t found a use case for it. Why? These two comics summarise it.

There’s a story I like about a cyclist who spent a lot of time optimizing everything to complete a lap faster. After all that effort spent on optimization, he brought his lap time from 45 minutes to 42 minutes.

He realized that all that effort for just a three-minute save actually does not change anything in his day-to-day life. All that optimization didn’t feel worth it.

Also, I usually follow my rule of three: wait at least 3 months for the hype around a product to settle. Because just so you can automate something doesn’t mean it is worth your time.

Same idea applies here. If a task takes 30 seconds or a minute and you already have a keyboard shortcut for it, than you don’t need to automate it. Below are some examples of what people use OpenClaw for, and how I already have a system in place to do the same task.

• Creating notes: OpenClaw lets you send a WhatsApp message and it creates a note for you. I just use Whisper Flow, dictate directly into Apple Notes on mobile.

• Calendar invites: OpenClaw can take a message and create a calendar event. I do the same with the Raycast natural language extension. Describe the event in plain English and it’s done. I almost never create events from my phone anyway.

• Email summaries: OpenClaw gives you a daily digest of your inbox. I clean my inbox every evening as a habit, so there’s nothing left to summarise.

• Organizing notes: OpenClaw can sort and organize your notes automatically. I do a weekly review on weekends where I go through everything myself. it takes 15 to 30 minutes and I actually know where everything is.

• Slack and Jira: OpenClaw can read threads and draft replies for you. But there are already Slack bots built into both tools that do this. Cursor and Claude agents can also be tagged directly in Slack. More importantly, most threads which I need to reply, require full context, so I need to read the full thread anyway.

• Complex automations: OpenClaw can chain multi-step workflows together. Zapier and n8n already do this.

An Important thing to note here is that, I can do all of this because I’m a developer. I can write a script, prompt Claude to build a small extension, or set up an automation myself. OpenClaw might genuinely be useful for people who aren’t technical. But since I already have the ability to build what I need, I haven’t found a real use case for it yet.

Once I do, I’ll use it and Post it here.

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. SDK Engineer - Flutter At Supabase

We’re looking for a Flutter SDK Engineer to join our SDK team and help bring first-class Supabase support to the Flutter and Dart ecosystems. You’ll work closely with the broader SDK team, the developer community, and product engineering, helping us design, build, and maintain a Flutter SDK that integrates naturally with Flutter’s widget lifecycle, state management patterns, and reactive programming model — and scales to millions of developers.

Salary Range: Not Mentioned

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✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Making My 1970’s-Style Renderer Multi-Threaded by Filip Hracek

The following article describes a Flutter use case that is so niche that I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m literally the only person who has it at this point.

With isolate-based concurrency, you don’t need to deal with deadlocks and concurrent modification bugs because your “threads” (isolates) can only communicate by sending each other messages. These messages are always deeply copied, so you can’t accidentally trample on another isolate’s collection, for example. You get your own copy

2. Five Worlds by Joel Spolsky

I have read numerous books and articles about TDD, Clean Architecture, Agile, Extreme Programming, etc. While these concepts are valuable, they may not be universally applicable.

The approach to working in a startup can differ from that in a corporate setting or when building an sdk used by developers. Here, Joel describes five types of software building that require completely different approaches.

3. Don’t Delegate Understanding by Steph Ango

To inoculate yourself don’t delegate understanding. If you build your own understanding you will be the one who earns the dividends.

4. GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team by Ian Duncan

I have used every CI system known to man, and the GitHub Actions log viewer is the only one that has crashed my browser.

I agree the log viewer is terrible in GitHub Actions. In order to find the error message, you have to do at least 5 clicks to locate that message in the logs.

5. How I Use Claude Code by Boris Tane

This is the exact flow I have described in one of the blog posts “PLAN.md” which works for me in a similar fashion, saving time and reducing mistakes.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. OpenClaw- Looking Past the Hype

This video basically complements this short blog which I have shared above.

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📦 Code from Packages

1. Auto Layout Frame

Flutter implementation of Figma's Auto Layout frames with support for alignment, padding, gap, resizing, and overflow behavior.

📚 Quotes From Books

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🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Ask HN- Share Your Productive Usage of OpenClaw

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Pomelli by Google Labs

😂 Fun and Memes

1. Say NO to Claude Code

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

This is my rule of three, which I derived from a book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby for creating abstraction when it’s repeated three times. Since then I started applying this rule to everything in my day-to-day life.

In programming, I only abstract a function, class, or module if it’s being repeated three times. Because in the third attempt, you have more context and information to make the right abstraction.

For using hype products and tools, I wait at least three months for the hype to die down. You’re not going to miss anything by being three months late. I watch the news, see how it’s going but I don’t try it myself until people have used it and found it useful in this three month.

For automation, I only automate something if it happens three times. I write a script or create an agent for it. Sometimes doing it manually in a minute is faster than building a tool.

For projects, I can manage three project at a time, not more. Primary project where main income comes from, a freelance project to explore other skills, and a side project to experiment with.

For follow-ups, I do three follow-ups to get my answer. If I don’t get a response in my third attempt, I either escalate it or let it go. This applies to incoming message as well. If someone reaches out to me once than I will miss it. But if someone tries three times, I feel obligated to reply.

For health, I waited three days before seeing a doctor. For problems like gym & sports injuries, sore throat, upset stomach, muscle pain, fever, and cold, 90% of the time they get better by day three. After COVID, this health issue used caused me anxiety, but now it doesn’t.

For people, I give someone three attempts to show up on time or for a mistake. If they’re late or making same mistake for the third time, it’s a pattern. They don’t value my time and they don’t want to learn. Better to let go of those people.

For friends/colleague group, I believe you don’t need many best friends; you just need a group of three friends because there is always another perspective in the group, and you can tease one person by teaming up each time. 😂

Why Three? and NOT Four ? Because three is a really good number for finding patterns. If anything happens for...

1st time : Its Random

2nd time : Its Coincidence

3rd time : Its a Pattern.

The rule of three has become my mental framework. It helps me avoid over-engineering, overreacting, , and over-committing.

💡Flutter/AI Tips & Tricks:

1. Ollama- A Cost-Effective Alternative to LLM APIs

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Flutter Developer at Arting Digital • Pune

We are looking for a skilled and passionate Flutter Developer with 3–4 years of experience in mobile application development. The ideal candidate will have hands-on expertise in building high-performance, cross-platform mobile applications using Flutter and Dart

Salary Range: ₹6L – ₹7L

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✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Configurable Home Screen Widget for Flutter Apps on iOS by Anton Borries

Want to give your users more control over their Home Screen Widgets? Imagine a weather widget where they can choose their city, or a to-do list widget displaying specific lists. This level of customization enhances user experience and makes your widgets truly personal.

2. How Personal AI Agents and Agent Orchestrators Like OpenClaw or GasTown Are Made by Arnav Gupta

It’s a new type of engineering where you orchestrate multiple tool calls, memory management, and all that stuff which we were earlier using in the available disc-based non-volatile memory of the device, but now it’s more about doing something similar but with agents.

3. The Art of Innovation by Guy Kawasaki

Think digital, act analog. Thinking digital means that companies should use all the digital tools at its disposal–computers, web sites, instruments, whatever–to create great products. But companies should act analog–that is, they must remember that the purpose of innovation is not cool products and cool technologies but happy people. Happy people is a decidedly analog goal.

4. AI Fatigue Is Real and Nobody Talks About It by Siddhant Khare

AI reduces the cost of production but increases the cost of coordination, review, and decision-making. And those costs fall entirely on the human.

Generative work gives you flow states. Evaluative work gives you decision fatigue.

You are collaborating with a probabilistic system, and your brain is wired for deterministic ones.

The people who waited and did nothing often ended up in a better position than the people who adopted early and had to migrate twice.

now have a hard rule: three attempts. If the AI doesn’t get me to 70% usable in three prompts, I write it myself. No exceptions. This single rule has saved me more time than any prompting technique I’ve ever learned.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Top 10 Programming & AI Books You Should Read in 2026

It’s a shameless plug. I’ve wanted to make this video for a long time, and it was one of the most challenging to edit. Let me know if you like it or want to see more like this videos in the future.

2. Data vs Hype- How Orgs Actually Win With AI - The Pragmatic Summit

Here is my key takeaway:

1. AI is not going to solve your organizational or human problems. Until you address the human element, AI won’t be very helpful.

2. AI is a tool. Focusing solely on a Dev’s productivity level won’t make a big impact.

3. AI adoption is extensive, but its impact within organizations is minimal.

I like the analogy of going to the moon. Just like how we found new technologies and knowledge by exploring the moon, we can do the same with AI. It won’t automate everything, but it’s a powerful tool to address organizational challenges.

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📦 Code from Packages

1. llamadart

llamadart is a high-performance Dart and Flutter plugin for llama.cpp. It lets you run GGUF LLMs locally across native platforms and web (CPU/WebGPU bridge path).

2. RayBridge

MCP server that bridges Raycast extensions to any MCP-compatible client.

Discovers locally installed Raycast extensions, loads their tool definitions, and serves them over the Model Context Protocol via stdio or HTTP.

🔖Tweet I Liked

1. The most correct take on AI coding agents I have seen.

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. ParentApproved.tv

2. Claude-Mem

Subscribe now

😂 Fun and Memes

1. VS Code extension that screams FAAAAH

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

I am an IntelliJ user for a decade and moved to Cursor last year. The reason I wanted to try Cursor was its promise of AI integration directly within the IDE. Here are my honest thoughts after using it extensively.

Why I Choose Cursor

I genuinely liked Cursor because no other IDE was doing anything similar. Three things that stood out for me was...

1. Inline Diff Review — Getting all the diffs right inside the IDE and being able to accept each individual line felt promising.

2. Inline Code Generation — I could select a function and ask the AI to generate or modify code based on it. Simple, effective, and fast.

3. Natural Language Terminal — Type a plain English instruction in the terminal and get the corresponding command

The Initial Struggle: Key Mappings

Cursor is a fork of VS Code, and it comes with VS Code bindings. I am an IntelliJ user, so I used the IntelliJ Key-map Plugin to bring over familiar shortcuts, and it worked about 70–80% of the time.

Every new habit takes time, though. I struggled for about a month, and eventually, it started clicking. I became comfortable using shortcuts, moving panels, and leveraging the AI tools inside Cursor, similar to IntelliJ.

Cursor’s AI Agent Fell Short

After using Cursor’s built-in AI agent for a while, I found it wasn’t good enough. The output was average and the agent kept derailing even after setting up cursor rules. I got better result from Claude free version hence I though of using Claude code.

Referencing files from the terminal was hacky and slow at first, but I got my work done and gradually got used to it. There was no UI initially, but than VS Code got an extension that brought Claude Code into a chat interface — and I really liked that.

The Plan.md Workflow Changed Everything

I adopted a plan.md workflow where I plan everything out first. Instead of juggling 10 to 12 files changing all over the place. Instead of going through each line to accept or reject changes, I work from a single document.

Once those changes are applied, I use the Git diff tool to review them. Since I’ve already accepted the plan, I usually accept majority of the generated code. My review process becomes:

1. Check the diff before running the code

2. Ask Claude Code for any changes

3. Run the code and verify it works

4. Review the Git diff one more time before committing — checking whether each change was truly necessary

This workflow completely eliminated my need for Cursor’s line-by-line code acceptance feature. I simply don’t need it anymore.

Why I Left Cursor

Claude Code became the only agent I was using, so I didn’t need Cursor’s agent UI or tooling at all. Honestly, I didn’t even bother trying other tools because Claude Code was working so well, and I didn’t want to invest time learning something that might become obsolete. Following are the main reason for switch back.

• Using Git for Diff : No need for Accept/Reject UI feature for each file

• zsh-ai from Terminal : This allows me to generate command from any terminal

• Cursor’s constant UI changes — The agent editor kept shifting between pop-ups, chat, and terminal. It broke my workflow repeatedly.

• Redundant costs — I was already paying for Claude Code and wasn’t using any Cursor-specific features.

• Run everywhere : I can run my AI agent anywhere with Claude Code, which I also use in my Obsidian vault.

My Current Setup

Now I’m back on IntelliJ + Claude Code, and it works really well for me.

The one thing I genuinely miss from Cursor is tab completion. It was blazing fast and made writing boilerplate code effortless. IntelliJ’s tab completion isn’t as quick. But I am fine with that for now.

💡Flutter/AI Tips & Tricks:

1. Claude Code Insight Command

2. The Complete Guide to Nano Banana Pro- 10 Tips for Professional Asset Production

3. Stacked Diffs on Github

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💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. (Senior) Software Engineer Flutter (m/f/d) at 1KOMMA5°

- Hamburg, Remote, Berlin, München

We are looking for you to join our tech team in Berlin, Munich, or Hamburg. 1KOMMA5° is creating Germany's largest one-stop-shop for the sale, installation, and servicing of solar panels, heat pumps, electricity solutions, and charging infrastructure. And the best part? They are all interconnected!

Salary Range: Not mentioned

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✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. It’s Still Worth Blogging in the Age of AI - Giles Thomas

The corollary is that if you find that post, say something. Drop the author a note, leave a comment. No one else does.

For every YT celebrity, there are thousands of people posting good content on the internet and not knowing if it’s being seen or appreciated by anyone.

2. A Techie’s Guide to Keeping Young Kids Away From Technology by Filip Hracek

If you decide to have a video game console at home, put it in the living room. This works really well for us. The kid associates playing video games with family fun, and there’s no way for him to shut himself away for unhealthy amounts of time while playing.

In a living room, you always compete for the space with other members of the family, and you tend to self-regulate your time much better, too.

3. My AI Adoption Journey by Mitchell Hashimoto

This is a more nuanced and practical perspective on using AI in everyday life, unlike the extreme views of Doomsday Scenario. The reason AI work for Mitchell is because he is a great software engineer proficient in task breakdown, workflow division, and decision-making.

4. Just Use Postgres by Ethan McCue

In one of side project I used Google Sheets as a database for my app 😂 and then migrated to Supabase, which is based on Postgres.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. We Are the Art | Brandon Sanderson’s Keynote Speech

This reminds me of a scene in “Kung Fu Panda”. There is no secret ingredients. It’s just YOU.

There is no art. YOU are the art.

2. After Two Years of Vibecoding, I’m Back to Writing by Hand

I am in the same boat, but I didn’t have words to describe it. Most of the time, I was the one understanding the code and explaining it to the AI on how to write the appropriate code. So, I was the one doing most of the work, thinking, and describing it. AI was just helper.

3. SliverFillRemaining

📦 Code from Packages

1. Dascade

The Dart ASCII Console Application Development Environment

Dascade is an experimental, immediate‑mode TUI (Terminal User Interface) framework for Dart.

It is designed to be lightweight, deterministic, and portable, enabling developers to build rich terminal applications without retained widget trees, implicit layout passes, or hidden state.

2. Chirp

A lightweight, flexible logging library for Dart with instance tracking, child loggers, and multiple output formats.

📚 Quotes From Books

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. How to get a remote job by thoughtful networking

2. 25 Questions to Ask Yourself Every Year by Gourav Goyal

😂Fun and Memes

1. The UNIX Pipe Card Game

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

It’s very hard to keep up with all the new AI models, agents, tools, and workflows that are released each day. It often feels like you are missing out on something, even if you are using AI regularly in your day-to-day work.

Sometimes, I feel frustrated because the time I spent on building an AI workflow is now outdated, replaced by a better AI tool or model.

I find myself searching for prompts everywhere, copying other people’s “working” prompts. Sometimes, I waste so much time getting the prompt and workflow right that I could have used that time to directly improve the actual work by doing it manually (i.e., writing or coding myself).

Even if you manage to create something, it can become obsolete within a week or a month. Each model produces different outputs, and everything comes with different guidelines. It feels tiring, but despite this, it’s hard to ignore AI because it’s everywhere. It’s part of all our developer tools: IDE, terminal, Git UI tools, and even in Postman.

For writing things in my style, I did not find AI helpful. It’s always too generic, verbose, and uses “perfect” words that I don’t use. However, the biggest help I get from AI in writing is fixing grammar and transcribing my voice to text. That’s it. Apart from that, I did not find much good usage from AI for writing.

I don’t have a clear answer on how to keep up with this. Even experts like Andrej are struggling to keep pace with it. However, two things have immensely helped me:

1. The PLAN.md workflow, which has not changed for me in the past 2 years

2. Wait 3-6 months to get the new model mature.

3. Don’t try anything experimental or just launch.

4. I only create an AI workflow if I’ve done the same task at least three times.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Before publishing to pub.dev, run: `pana .`

2. Press tab to add more instructions in Claude Code

Share

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Flutter Developer ( Middle/Senior) at Bolder Apps

We’re searching for a Middle/Senior Flutter Developer to join our growing engineering team. If you’re passionate about building smooth, high-performance mobile apps and want to work in an environment that embraces AI-powered workflows, this role is for you.

Salary Range: Not mentioned

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. How I Use Every Claude Code Feature by Shrivu Shankar

The Takeaway: Use slash commands as simple, personal shortcuts, not as a replacement for building a more intuitive CLAUDE.md and better-tooled agent.

The Takeaway: Custom subagents are a brittle solution. Give your main agent the context (in CLAUDE.md) and let it use its own Task/Explore(...) feature to manage delegation.

More in the weeds, Claude Code stores all session history in ~/.claude/projects/ to tap into the raw historical session data. I have scripts that run meta-analysis on these logs, looking for common exceptions, permission requests, and error patterns to help improve agent-facing context.

Subscribe now

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Are We Stuck With the Same Desktop UX Forever? | Ubuntu Summit 25.10

Such a great talk! I’ve never considered changing desktop UX before.

• Mobile caters to consumers, while desktop is for productivity. This is why few people write lengthy emails on mobile; they draft them on mobile and edit on desktop later.

• Copying is a good thing by making subtle creative changes that are no longer present in the desktop world.

• The “Could, Should, Might, and Don’t” framework offers a valuable perspective on future considerations.

• Programmers approach problems mathematically (Might), while designers think statistically (Should). Instead of conflicting, we should align in the same directions.

2. I shipped code I don’t understand and I bet you have too” – Jake Nations, Netflix

• Dijkstra mentioned in 1970 that the bigger a system gets in size, the more programming becomes a problem. Now, with more AI generation, we don’t understand that the programming problem becomes an even bigger issue.

• We need human review in the loop, and the best way to do this is to research and plan with AI before writing any code in a single plan file, which allows us to identify false architecture assumptions or bugs in the research before implementation.

• I have already described this in my previous newsletter that PLAN.md is the best AI workflow.

📦 Code from Packages

1. Conalyz

A powerful command-line tool for analyzing Flutter applications for accessibility issues. Conalyz uses AST-based analysis to provide comprehensive accessibility checks for both Material and Cupertino widgets, helping developers ensure their Flutter applications are accessible to all users.

🔖Post I Liked

1. 100 Days of Raycast from Alexi

2. Ask HN- What Tech Job Would Let Me Get Away With the Least Real Work Possible?

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Design with AI

2. zsh-ai

😂Fun and Memes

1. enclose.horse

2. I Built a Miniature Mac Plus Assistant

A fun Flutter + Serverpod + Raspberry Pi project.

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

We used to read, write, and draw a lot in our childhood, but as we grew older, we lost these skills. The reason it is taught in school is that these are foundational skills necessary to perform any task.

In the age of AI, these skills have become even more important. They are now used to orchestrate AI to achieve better outputs.

Reading, writing, and drawing may sound like common sense, but guess what? Common sense is not that common. We are distracted by so many things, both internally and externally, that we don’t even realize that we’ve lost these skills.

In the age of distraction, it becomes really hard to engage in these activities. If you can accomplish this difficult task, then you will be an outlier, and you can differentiate yourself from many others. So...

Read. A Lot.

Not 2-minute, 5-minute blogs. I’m talking about long-form content where people have done deep research which requires your brain to focus. Like books, research papers, literature, and fiction.

Read as much as you can in whatever field you’re in. The more you read, the more words you have at your disposal to explain things.

As Javed Akhtar said, “Words are like bricks. The more bricks you have, the better house you can build.”

Write. A Lot.

When you read, you also need to write. Writing organizes your thinking. By sharing your learnings, writing YouTube scripts, collaborating on projects, writing sales pitches etc.

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. It’s one thing to have a vague idea in your head. It’s completely different to articulate it clearly enough that someone else (or something else, like AI) can understand it.

Even when you’re using AI, you have to write. The quality of your writing directly determines the quality of your prompts.

Draw. A Lot.

As kids, we used to draw everywhere, even on the walls. That’s what made our parents angry! 😂

Writing organizes thinking, while drawing organizes the imaginative pictures on paper. Not just drawing pictures, but drawing also helps in designing flowcharts, architectural diagrams, and more.

Since the AI tool like Gemini is becoming so advanced, providing it with a rough sketch of what we want can yield a 60-70% result of what we desire.

Why This Matters for AI

From an AI perspective, your output basically depends on the quality of your input, and the quality of your input depends on how specifically you’ve defined things.

The level of detail with which you’ve explained your ideas is crucial. To articulate these concepts clearly, your own thinking must first be clear about what needs to be done.

How many of you have experienced this: you know what you want to build, but you can’t explain it to AI?

You struggle to explain it properly because you lack the right words. You may not have organized your ideas effectively, and you find it difficult to draw or visualize them.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. 2025 LLM Year in Review by karpathy

Related to all this is my general apathy and loss of trust in benchmarks in 2025.

But not only does vibe coding empower regular people to approach programming, it empowers trained professionals to write a lot more (vibe coded) software that would otherwise never be written.

LLMs are emerging as a new kind of intelligence, simultaneously a lot smarter than I expected and a lot dumber than I expected.

Anthropic got this order of precedence correct and packaged CC into a delightful, minimal CLI form factor that changed what AI looks like - it’s not just a website you go to like Google, it’s a little spirit/ghost that “lives” on your computer. This is a new, distinct paradigm of interaction with an AI.

2. Publishing your work increases your luck by Aaron Francis

The goal is not to become famous, the goal is to increase the chances of luck finding us.

Luck = [Doing Things] * [Telling People]

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📺 Videos to Watch:

1. The Thinking Game | Full documentary | Tribeca Film Festival official selection

After seeing this video in my feed again and again, I finally watched it. And its just amazing.

I never knew about the protein folding problem, and it’s amazing to see how AI solves that problem.

AI writing code is great, but if AI can understand and predict biology, that’s at a science fiction level of stuff AI can do.

We are living in great times. Everyone is saying AGI is on the horizon. Let’s watch and see.

2. Full Workshop: Realtime Voice AI — Mark Backman, Daily

Voice agent something I am exploring on the side, building a Voice Agent that can join meetings and answer your queries. Pipecat is an amazing tool for this job.

3. Google’s NotebookLM Is Getting Even More Powerful

I did not know the potential of NotebookLLM until I used it in my recent project for research and writing YouTube scripts. Adding sources has become so easy.

• Discover and add PDFs from a reliable source to save time instead of manually searching for them.

• Connect to my drive and search for relevant files.

Subscribe now

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. The Prison of Financial Mediocrity

2. Make a codebase more productive for AI coding

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Google has introduced Play Billing Lab for testing the Billing Library integration

Fun and Memes

1. Dittytoy : The Code-Driven Music Playground for the Web.

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

Happy new Year 2026 everyone🎉 and I am proud to publish my 50th issue🎊.

Although 2026 went really well for me, I am ending my newsletter with some Rants😃. So below are my 25 Rants from 2025.

Career & Work

1. As you move up the career ladder, you’ll realize nobody knows anything. Everyone is just making their best guess.

2. Hiring is broken. The best two ways to get hired are through your network or by building something useful.

3. Work your ass off for the first 2-3 months of any project or job. People want someone trustworthy and reliable who can deliver. You need to establish that early on to secure long-term work.

4. Job security is a myth. I wake up every morning thinking this is my last day at work.

AI & Technology

5. People who say “skill issue” when you struggle with AI are just pretending they know everything.

6. AI is a tool, and a fool with a tool is still a fool. It’s like a hammer. Give it to the wrong person and they’ll break windows instead of building houses.

7. To get the best out of AI, you must read, write, and draw extensively yourself. These are the very important things most people delegate to AI, which is exactly what we shouldn’t do.

8. Producing content using AI doesn’t make you smart. It’s like wearing good looking clothes which doesn’t make you intelligent.

9. With AI, people sit at extremes. Those who think it’s just a fancy autocomplete are underestimating its power, and those who think it will replace developers are overestimating it.

Business

10. Students who enroll in computer science aren’t interested in computers. They just want to make money from home.

11. A person with mediocre business skills with mediocre technical skills is far superior to someone with high technical skills with less business skills.

12. Business people live with very high expectation, that if their competitor can do something, we should be able to do it easily. “If they can build WhatsApp and ChatGPT, why can’t we?”

13. Coding was never the problem. Understanding “What problem are we solving?” was.

Productivity

14. Slack is a productivity killer.

15. Tech people procrastinate by solving technical debt that isn’t aligned with business goals.

16. WhatsApp’s audio feature is an example of feature abuse. People describe a problem in a one-minute audio that could be explained in a one-line text.

17. To beat procrastination, you need to push through the first 300 seconds of any hard task.

Mindset & Psychology

18. All problems are emotional problems. Fix the emotion and you fix the problem.

19. People know their problems and the solutions, but they lack the guts and will to act.

20. People don’t like simple solutions because they’re too simple to be believable, and they don’t attract attention. People like complex solution just so that they can brag about it.

21. The less I care about outcomes, the better things get. Finding a job, writing a blog, making videos, all of it.

Life & Well-being

22. You can’t be successful alone. You need people around you starting with family, partner, friends, and your professional network.

23. Having kids is a classic example of the Pareto principle. You suffer 80% of the time to get 20% happiness. However, that 20% happiness makes your life 80% better.

24. Exercise is the best drug to improve both the quality and quantity (in terms of days) of your life.

25. You become whatever you consume. Junk food makes your body junk, and junk content makes your mind junk.

Note : There are always be exceptional people. However, finding those exceptional people is like finding a needle in a haystack. But if you do find them, never leave them.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Export Zip in Git

2. Dot Shorthands in Dart

Share

✍🏽Articles to read:

1. On 10 Years of Writing a Blog Nobody Reads by flowtwo.io

But is there still value in human produced writing? Subjectively, yes. Objectively? I’m not sure. I think there’s a lot of personal value in writing though.

2. Vibing a Non-Trivial Ghostty Feature by Mitchell Hashimoto

It is great to witness a practical AI usage in there day to day work by pioneers in programming field. Understanding the what you want to build with AI and the necessity of manual code review for AI-generated code is crucial.

3. Speed Matters- Why Working Quickly Is More Important Than It Seems by James Somers

The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you’ll finish more stuff per unit time. But there’s more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you’ll be inclined to do more.

4. The 26 Most Important Ideas for 2026 by Derek Thompson

The teen who reads daily is on track to become an endangered species.

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📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Build Hooks - Flutter Build Show

Dart Hook before flutter build allows you to...

• Link a system library

• Download a pre-compiled asset

• Compile our own asset

2. I Shrunk Down Into an M5 Chip

Always wondered how chips have become so powerful and what’s going on inside them? It’s stunning to visually see how small transistors have become (at the level of bacteria), with Photolithography being the biggest contributor to this factor, i.e., building transistors using light.

3. How to ACTUALLY Use Apple Reminders

Reminder in iOS is one of the most underrated apps. The features I like are:

1. The new Urgent option, which turns key tasks into alarms.

2. Callback reminders from the Phone app, so I don’t forget to return important calls.

3. Templates save me a ton of time for repeatable checklists, for example, my Travel bag item list.

4. The Kanban-style column view on iPad and Mac is where everything comes together—my tasks move visually from “Today” to “This Week” to “Done.”

Leave a comment

📦 Code from Packages

1. Universal BLE

A cross-platform (Android/iOS/macOS/Windows/Linux/Web) Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) plugin for Flutter.

2. ZenRouter

ZenRouter is the only router you’ll ever need - supporting three distinct paradigms to handle any routing scenario. From simple mobile apps to complex web applications with deep linking, ZenRouter adapts to your needs.

3. Whatsmeow

Whatsmeow is a Go library for the WhatsApp web multidevice API.

• Sending messages to private chats and groups (both text and media)

• Receiving all messages

• Managing groups and receiving group change events

• Joining via invite messages, using and creating invite links

• Sending and receiving typing notifications

• Sending and receiving delivery and read receipts

• Reading and writing app state (contact list, chat pin/mute status, etc)

• Sending and handling retry receipts if message decryption fails

• Sending status messages (experimental, may not work for large contact lists)

📚 Quote from Books

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Ask HN- Senior People, How Did Your Career Evolve?

2. Ask HN- How Can I Get Better at Using AI for Programming?

3. 10 Ideas for Greater Clarity in 2026

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. claude-code-transcripts

Convert Claude Code session files (JSON or JSONL) to clean, mobile-friendly HTML pages with pagination.

Example transcript produced using this tool.

2. There’s An AI For That® — Find The Right AI Tool For Any Task

😂 Fun and Memes

1. SQL Case Files

2. Took me 2 hours in Higgsfield. Are we cooked?

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

🎄🎅🏽 Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎄🎅🏽 Wishing you a happy holiday with your family.

Let’s get started…

When I started my career as a junior developer, I always thought there were so many things I wanted to improve in the current codebase, like trying new libraries, IDEs, or frameworks, but I couldn’t because my Tech lead didn’t allow it.

Then I told myself: “Once I become a tech lead or reach top management, I’ll do everything I can to make the codebase better, try new frameworks, experiment with new ideas, fix tech debt, and use all the shiny new tools.”

When I finally became a tech lead, I thought I would spend my time solving coding and technical problems. But I quickly realized that my role as a technical lead was less technical than I expected. It had become more of a sales job where I was constantly selling ideas.

• I have technical debt to fix? I need to sell it in a way the business can understand.

• There’s a new feature coming in? I need to sell how important this feature is for our user and how challenging it is.

As I moved up the ladder, it became increasingly clear: its a sales job. From Junior Developer to as....

• Senior Developer: You’re selling ideas to junior developers on how to implement a feature.

• Tech Lead: You’re selling the idea that how challenging this next user features is to built to a senior developers.

• Engineering Manager: You’re selling business priorities to your tech leads.

• CTO: You’re selling the tech vision to your managers.

• CEO: You’re selling your product’s value to your CTO.

• Founders with Investors: You’re selling the idea to investors that you’re creating something valuable and impactful.

The list goes on. Eventually, everything becomes a sales job. So try to learn how to sell, even as a software developer. It will help you tremendously in your career.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Expressiveness of Dart in Flutter in AsyncValue

2. A rough sketch with 2-3 prompt iterations is all you need to get a “good enough”

Share

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. A.I. Is a Printed Birthday Card Train to Paris by Filip Hracek

A.I. is a productivity tool. That means it will not make our workdays shorter. It will only make them faster. That’s not nothing, of course, but don’t trust anyone who tries to tell you that A.I. will give us more leisure time. That’s not how new tech works. (If it was, we’d be working 1 day a week by this point.)

2. All It Takes Is for One to Work Out by A Learning a Day

• You don’t need every job to choose you. You just need the one that’s the right fit.

• You don’t need every house to accept your offer. You just need the one that feels like home.

• You don’t need every person to want to build a life with you. You just need the one.

• You don’t need ten universities to say yes. You just need the one that opens the right door.

3. Become the Person That You Would Like to Be Around by Hasif

• You could be the reason someone starts to believe again.

• You could be the reason they don’t feel invisible.

• You could be the pause in someone’s chaos, the warmth in someone’s winter.

4. Engineering for Slow Internet by brr

I am a fan of building offline-first apps, which is really challenging. Here the developer describe the issue they faced in the South Pole due to poor internet connectivity, making it difficult for websites and apps to load properly.

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📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Give Me 9 Minutes, I’ll Make You AI-Native

• Link AI Chat as a resource in your project notes.

• Save AI-generated or reusable files in a folder to use as a reference for the next work.

• Ask AI to plan in phases and break them down into smaller tasks.

2. tldraw.computer - Steve Ruiz, Tldraw

What I have just watched!! I thought tldraw was only for drawing, but now I can turn drawings into images and diagrams. Create flows like n8n with simple drag and drop.

AI image generate from real-time drawing changes are my favorite.

3. Accelerating Dart Code Generation

We are not going to have macros to solve the code generation issue. However, we now have a build_runner, which is 3X faster.

4. Build an AI Avatar Personal Assistant | Full Pipecat Tutorial

Found a framework called Pipecat which allows you to quickly build voice agents with any service providers by simply plugging and playing the service into the pipeline.

For example, you can call a WhatsApp number to create a calendar invite by speaking to it. Building this kind of bots is now much easier.

I am planning to build a similar bot using Gemini. Comment below if you are interested in that idea.

Leave a comment

📦 Code from Packages

1. Romanize

• 🌏 Multi-language support: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic

• 🔍 Auto-detection: Automatically detects the languages present in the input text

• 🛠️ Flexible & extensible: Easily create your own custom romanizer for any language or writing system

• 📦 Lightweight: Minimal dependencies, fast performance

2. PDFx

Flutter Render & show PDF documents on Web, MacOs 10.11+, Android 5.0+, iOS and Windows.

Includes 2 api:

• renderer Work with Pdf document, pages, render page to image

• viewer Set of flutter widgets & controllers for show renderer result

3. CodeForge

A powerful, feature-rich code editor created using Flutter

Bring VS Code-level editing experience to your Flutter apps

📚 Quotes From Books

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

Presenterm

presenterm lets you create presentations in markdown format and run them from your terminal, with support for image and animated gifs, highly customizable themes, code highlighting, exporting presentations into PDF format, and plenty of other features. This is how the demo presentation looks like when running in the kitty terminal

😂Fun and Memes

1. Does AI Save Time

2. Explain Tech Debt to me I am 5

3. How to have fun as an adult

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

There are two types of learning:

1. Just-in-case learning which is what we do in school. Learning all subjects in case we might use them in future, such as biology, history, social studies, and mathematics.

2. Just-in-time learning is what we learn as we need it, typically what we do in our jobs. Once we specialize, whether as software engineers, doctors, or in any specific field, we start learning things as we go.

Earlier, just-in-case learning was the only option. However, in the AI and Internet era, just-in-time learning has become increasingly important. However to effectively learn just-in-time learning, we must first have our fundamentals clear.

Let me give an example from a consulting project I am working on.

My major experience comes from mobile app development. A few months ago, I got an opportunity to work on a full-fledged application with an Angular and Python that allows users to query using AI by speaking to it.

I didn’t know Python beyond basic scripting, nor did I have the backend knowledge for building an application with real-time transcription and AI chat features.

I used just-in-time learning to learn many concepts while working on the project:

• Building APIs

• Working with WebSockets

• Integrating third-party APIs into our system

• Implementing logging

• Understanding Docker for releases

The reason I was able to pull this off was the strong fundamentals I built through just-in-case learning, and on top of it, just-in-time learning to speed up the process.

Because I have a developed good software fundamentals from 11 years of experience, I knew how to structure classes and write functions.

With AI, I describe what I need in a prompt, review the plan, start implementing, and make manual tweaks where necessary or when things go off the rails.

I’ve seen many engineers stuck in a loop when just-in-time learning is required. They feel they don’t have enough experience, new frameworks slow them down, unfamiliar with dev environments and so on.

However, in our AI-powered, information-rich era, we need to develop just-in-time learning skills. Just-in-case learning is valuable when starting out, but as we advance, we need to master learning how to learn.

What is the latest skill you have learned from Just-in-Time learning? Hit the Comment below.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Staff Software Engineer, Flutter at GoodLeap

We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer (Flutter). As a Staff Engineer, you will play a critical role in the technical leadership and growth of our mobile team. On the GoodLeap Pros team, you’ll work closely product managers, designers, and other engineers, to build an entirely new CRM platform for our clients in the trades.

Salary Range: $173K – $200K • Offers Bonus

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Why are Neural Networks architected that way in the first place? by Arnav Gupta

A simple OCR system which uses multi layers probability algorithm to find a number is used an analogy for understanding how neural networks work by using weights.

2. Sacrificing the Present for An Anticipated Memory by Scantron

“The ‘Instagram Generation’ now experiences the present as an anticipated memory.”

3. AI Horseless Carriages by Pete Koomen

Spend a few minutes thinking about how YOU write email. Try writing a “You System Prompt” and see what happens. If the output doesn’t look right, try to imagine what you left out of your explanation and try it again. Repeat that a few times until the output starts to feel right to you.

Whenever a new technology is invented, the first tools built with it inevitably fail because they mimic the old way of doing things. “Horseless carriage” refers to the early motor car designs that borrowed heavily from the horse-drawn carriages that preceded them. Here’s an example of an 1803 Steam Carriage design I found on Wikipedia:

4. Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer by Haseeb Qureshi

Employment is just striking a mutual deal in the labor market.

Negotiating is a natural and expected part of the process of trying to make a deal. It’s also a signal of competence and seriousness.

Imagine you were negotiating with someone over buying your watermelons, but the negotiation took so long that by the time you’d reached an agreement, your watermelons had gone bad.

Needing more than three days to make a life decision isn’t a sign of anything other than thoughtfulness.

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📺 Videos to Watch:

1. AI Agent for Test Automation - KaneAI | Generative AI Testing Tool

This is a new testing tool that I found easy to use for describing tests and creating steps for running tests on mobile devices. The main advantage of this tool is that it automatically adapts to changes made, checking if they are bugs or intentional design changes, and adjusting the steps accordingly to ensure successful testing.

2. My 17 Minute AI Workflow To Stand Out At Work

Notebook LLM is great for research by asking questions to on uploaded research papers all at once.

Subscribe now

📦 Code from Packages

1. Native Video Player

A Flutter widget to play videos on iOS, macOS and Android using a native implementation.

Perfect for building video-centric apps like TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, as well as general video playback needs.

2. Gesture Recorder

gesture_recorder enables you to “record” all the gesture event happening during recording.

The recorded data can be replayed, which means you can duplicate exactly the same behavior again and again.

3. Sketchy Design Lang

Sketchy is a hand-drawn, xkcd-inspired design language for Flutter on mobile, desktop, and web. It’s powered by the wired_elements code, the flutter_rough package and the Comic Shanns font.

Sketchy is a complete design language: a theming system, widget catalog, and example gallery that avoids Material/Cupertino entirely. Every control is drawn with rough_flutter, seeded primitives prevent flicker, and the palette mirrors the Sketchy Mode color brief.

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📚 Quotes From Books

1. 102 Lessons from the 102 Books I Read This Year by Scott Young

Chunk your helping. People who volunteer in bigger chunks (say one day per week) get more benefits than those who do so every day, perhaps because it makes the act more salient.

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🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Ask HN- How Are Parents Who Program Teaching Their Kids Today?

2. Being Famous in not Building Public Brand

3. The Most Underrated iOS 18 Feature For Motion Sickness

😂 Fun and Memes

1. AI World Clocks

2. kavishdevar/librepods- AirPods liberated from Apple’s ecosystem.

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

I’ve tried a ton of different AI workflows, watched countless YouTube videos, read blog posts, tried different approaches. And here’s the best one I’ve found: it’s called PLAN.md. It’s actually pretty old-school.

In the PLAN.md workflow, you describe what you want, create a plan, iterate on it with course corrections, verify it’s right, and only then ask AI to implement it. Yeah, I know. Sounds boring. But it works.

In my previous workflow, AI was making me slow. I’d describe something, it’d start coding immediately, and suddenly I’m tracking changes across 10 different files trying to figure out what’s happening.

And, sometimes it’d just hallucinate APIs that don’t exist and start implementing them. I wouldn’t catch it until way too late. The code changes were scattered everywhere. Hard to track, hard to review, and very easy to miss mistakes.

Here’s my workflow now:

1. Speak and transcribe what I want using Super Whisper.

2. Ask AI to grammar correct and make it transcribe more readable.

3. After I’m satisfied with the prompt, I ask AI to create a Plan.

4. If the feature is big, I ask AI to break it into separate phases in the Plan document.

5. Repeat and iterate on the Plan until I’m satisfied.

6. Ask AI to implement the feature based on the Plan.

7. Review code in each phase, test it, make changes manually if necessary, and keep going.

This is the prompt snippet I use for each feature:

<Describe problem here>

Please analyze the problem and create a plan first in DATE_FEATURE_NAME_PLAN.md file.

Then for implementation, I create a new conversation to keep it context-free and only use the info described in the plan:

Please implement the feature described in @FEATURE_NAME_PLAN.md plan step by step.

The advantages of this approach:

• It’s way easier to verify one document than track AI changes across your entire codebase.

• You catch hallucinations early—when AI says it’ll use some API, you can verify it exists before any code gets written.

• Catching errors in a plan doc is way cheaper than debugging implemented code.

• You can share more context in the plan if AI missed something. Like components available in your existing design system or if you want to replicate an API similar to another one.

• Your PLAN.md can now go into version control, which serves as documentation and a reference for AI to use for future updates or fixes.

However, it does feel slower upfront. You’re speaking, transcribing, fixing grammar, iterating on plans. Sometimes I’ll iterate on a plan 5 times before I’m satisfied.

But because of this workflow, what used to take a few hours of chaotic implementation now takes maybe an hour of careful planning and verification. That’s how we should be doing implementation anyway. Thinking and planning before writing any code.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. What do you call that thing we just changed?

2. New Dart Implied Parameters Proposal

3. maxCount in Badge in 3.38

Share

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Flutter Widget Previewer by flutter docs

I like Custom @Preview configuration for the app-specific theme or wrapping it into a certain widget show widget in initial state in Preview. Also, @MultiPreview helps in multi-platform designs with different sizes.

2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading by Marcprux

It bears reminding that “sideload” is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk. This could perhaps be further precised as “direct installing”, in case you need to make a distinction between obtaining software the old-fashioned way versus going through a rent-seeking intermediary marketplace like the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.

3. Mistakes I See Engineers Making in Their Code Reviews by Sean goedecke

Code review is not the time for you to impose your personal taste on a colleague. However, you can and should gatekeep AI-generated PRs as much as you want.

4. Why Your Boss Isn’t Worried About AI by Boyd

In programming, everything is deterministic, making bugs easy to find. However, in AI, even a slight change in a prompt can lead to significantly different answers.

In my opinion, tracking bugs in AI system is challenging, as fixing them in the training model or dataset may not prevent others from encountering the same issue due to different prompts.

Subscribe now

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. What’s New in Flutter 3.38 and Dart 3.10

My favorite features from this release:

1. Dart shorthand not only for enum but also for inferring class context, which can be used in functions as well.

2. Web config YAML makes it easy to share configurations across teams rather than setting them up in CLI arguments.

3. Experimental Widget Preview Support in DevTools. 🥳

2. What Is the Dark Web? A Guide to the Dark Side of the Internet

I’ve heard about the dark web in hacker movies. I came across this via YouTube’s recommendation. After watching it, I gained some insights.

• We only access 5% of the internet; the other 90% comprises private documents, with the remaining 5% being the dark web.

• Dark web is like a risky neighborhood, and it’s advised not to explore it.

• The dark web provides anonymity, ensuring that your identity and location remain unknown.

• To access it, tools like TOR, Sandbox, Firewall, and VPN are recommended.

3. Why Shopify CEO Loves Raycast

Today I learned: Map the Hyper key with a script and use the browser as a separate app through a script command. Turn websites into apps and launch them using Raycast commands.

Share

📦 Code from Packages

1. TapTest

TapTest is a revolutionary testing framework built on top of Flutter tester that encourages writing useful, user-facing E2E tests. Tests interact with your app the way users do - by tapping buttons and interface elements, validating labels content, checking elements presence and capturing visual snapshots.

Because TapTest tests your app through its GUI, your tests are usually resilient to code refactors and implementation detail changes. Go wild, restructure your entire app, change state management, its architecture and as long as the user interface remains consistent, your tests will continue to give you confidence your app works!

2. Mix

Mix is a simple and intuitive styling system for Flutter, enabling the creation of beautiful and consistent UIs with ease.

Mix brings industry-proven design system concepts to Flutter. It separates style semantics from widgets while maintaining an easy-to-understand and manageable relationship between them.

• Easily compose, merge, and apply styles across widgets.

• Write cleaner, more maintainable styling definitions.

• Apply styles conditionally based on the BuildContext.

3. PipeX State Management

PipeX is a Flutter library designed for state management, utilizing pipeline architecture. It focuses on precise reactivity and streamlined code to enhance development.

📚 Quote from Books

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Doing Well in Your Courses

2. How to Demo

3. Advanced Time Management.…🧵

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🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Pubgrade” Extension for VS Code Is Live!

2. WhatsApp MCP Server

This project is an MCP server that lets an LLM access and interact with your personal WhatsApp via the WhatsApp Web multidevice API. It stores messages locally in SQLite and provides tools to search, read, send texts and media, and download files. Setup requires running a Go bridge and a Python MCP server and caution is needed to avoid data exfiltration risks.

😂 Fun and Memes

1. NO

2. Phone Numbers for Use in TV Shows, Films and Creative Works

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

I didn’t know the meaning of “burn the bridges” until someone pointed it out after I did. For those unfamiliar, it means leaving a company on really BAD terms. Things go wrong all the time, but leaving on bad terms creates a sour taste, not just with leadership, but with the entire company.

I worked at a company for around two years, but over time, disagreements developed between the leadership and me. Instead of understanding our differences, I kept fighting to make things work. I was fighting for things I believed in, but I wasn’t clever enough to pick my battles. Every battle is not yours to fight—you have to let some things go. That’s where I made my mistake: I took everything personally and fought for everything I could.

When I left the company, I said bad things about them and the leadership. I pointed out their mistakes without realizing mine. To this day, I feel that was one of the biggest mistakes of my entire career. Now whenever I meet those people, I can’t comfortably look them in the eye.

You might think the tech community is so big that no one would know. But in reality, our tech community is small, and word gets out pretty quickly. Everyone in your network will eventually hear about you and how you conduct yourself. That’s why it’s crucial to pick your fights carefully and never leave on bad terms.

After a certain number of years in this industry, networking becomes your best asset. It helps with everything—getting into companies, building trust, showcasing your work. But most importantly, people remember how you behave and how you bring teams together to get things done.

So Choose your battles wisely and always leave on good terms—your reputation and network are your most valuable career assets.

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Build Hooks in Dart are so COOL!

2. Make a codebase more productive for AI coding tools

3. Place Type between Required

Share

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Senior Software Engineer (Mobile) at App Factory

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer who is excited to build from zero, driving both product and platform outcomes. You’ll:

• Architect and ship the first version of a new 0 to 1 product - from concept to launch.

• Design and own reusable systems, growth tooling, and experimentation infrastructure that accelerate iteration across this and future Kikoff verticals.

• Balance speed with foundation - knowing when to move fast to learn, and when to invest in the right abstractions to scale.

Salary Range: $200K – $260K • Offers Equity

2. Senior Software Engineer (Mobile) at Grant Growth Team

You’ll work closely with product, data science, and operations teams to ship features that directly impact customers’ financial wellbeing while maintaining the highest standards of reliability, security, and compliance.

Salary Range: $200K – $260K • Offers Equity

3. Senior Flutter Developer (Polish required) at LeanCode

We are looking for a Senior Flutter Developer who ensures the technical excellence of our mobile projects with their deep expertise and innovative approach. You should have a profound understanding of Flutter’s internals, seamless platform integrations, and a strong grasp of mobile software architecture.

Salary Range: Not mentioned

Subscribe now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer by sean goedecke

I used to avoid politics and always assumed it was the worst part in tech companies, but gradually, I began to comprehend it and leverage it to my advantage.

Keeping a backlog of ideas and pitching them at the right time is crucial advice. Even the best idea may fail if the timing is incorrect. For instance, attempting to launch a new AI project during a period of significant management changes or layoffs would be a bad idea.

2. Ideas Arise Through Action by More To That

It turns out that the writing itself is where the ideas come from

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Andrej Karpathy — AGI Is Still a Decade Away

If you’ve watched any video this week, than this one is a must watch. A 3hr long video, but worth every minute. Here is my takeaways:

• The misstep of AGI was thatm it wastrying to derive it from games, which do not interact with the real world like an accountant does.

• Humans do not become intelligent solely through Reinforcement Learning; RL apply to motor skills rather than intellect skills.

• Andrej’s focus is on creating practical applications rather than replicating animals.

• To enhance an agent’s performance, eliminate internet-acquired knowledge and retain only the core intelligence (algorithm) for generating output.

• The model loses memory upon boot-up, but it is restored with the brain’s rejuvenation during sleep-wake cycles.

• Advising AI firms against over-reliance on AI.

• Describing how a tutor’s ability to balance challenging tasks with easier ones aligns with an individual’s worldview.

• Mention of the “eureka per second” concept.

2. Beyond Prompts- My 3-Folder System for Effective AI Coding in Flutter

A good way to organize your AI prompts, history, and documents is to avoid repetitive mistakes. Personally, I save shorthand commands that I continuously write in a single document and use via tools like Raycast or Claude command to add addtional input into prompts.

Share

🪶 Quotes from Books

📦 Code from Packages

1. Vyuh Node Flow

A flexible, high-performance node-based flow editor for Flutter applications, inspired by React Flow. This monorepo contains the core library and demo application.

🔖 Post I Found Useful

1. Components

The official design components of the Indian Government website are rarely seen.

2. Curated Supply - Product Discovery

3. AI system that automates product video creation for entire e-commerce catalogs.

😂Fun and Memes

1. Pivots

2. This run stats

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

First of all, 🪔 Happy Diwali everyone 🪔

We need more Product Engineers because writing code was never the hard part. The challenge has always been communication, and that communication gap happens when we don’t understand how the business works end to end and how our product helps customers.

Most junior developers (myself included, back in the day) tend to focus on shiny new tech tools, scalable architecture, and 100% code coverage.

Don’t get me wrong. Those are all wonderful things to learn early in your career. But as you grow, you need to shift your focus toward the product itself. What problem does it solve for your customers? How does it help your business grow?

Here’s the thing: you can build the most scalable architecture in the world, but nobody’s going to pay for it if it doesn’t help their business grow or serve their customers well. Understanding that is the real key.

I’ve met countless developers who say, “I just do what my manager asks me to do.” They never stop to ask why they’re building this or how it benefits the customer.

We have a lot of developers who never ask why and don’t think about the product. And nobody wants those developers for the long term.

So be a Product Engineer, not just a Software Engineer.

What is the best tech decision you made that led to huge business results? Hit reply - I love hearing these stories.

Leave a comment

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💼 Jobs to Apply:

Senior Flutter Engineer at VESPR Wallet

VESPR is the leading wallet on the Cardano blockchain, securing $400M+ in user assets and processing $30M+ daily in self-custody transactions.

We’re now rebuilding our mobile experience and expanding into Bitcoin — and we’re looking for a Senior Flutter Engineer to help architect the next generation of cross-chain wallets.

Salary Range: €7,000 / month (B2B) + €100K in stock options

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Why I Only Use Google Sheets by Maybe-Ray

When I was building a Dental management app for my wife’s clinic, I started off with Google Sheets and then moved to a relationships database later. I’ve tried dozens of task and expense management apps and tools to see everything on a one page dashboard... I ditched everything and have been using Google Sheets for the last 3 years.

Similarly, I am using a google doc to add all my social media weekly posts. Also, I’ve built a simple Raycast extension as form to fill the Google Sheets.

2. Let’s talk about AI art by Matthew Inman

Another example of how AI cannot replace art. The comic itself is art, and no AI can reproduce it.

3. Stop Avoiding Politics by Terrible Software

I spent 4 years avoiding politics. Now I understand there is no escape from it. It’s a part of the human system. Once, I was so frustrated because my project didn’t get through just because I didn’t speak up at the right time in the team meeting.

4. SQL Needed Structure by Jamie

Databases store data sequentially, but the user interface may require it differently. This blog describes how to structure queries based on UI structure.

Share

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. The Great Thread Merge

To summarize, currently we have:

1. UI Thread: To render widgets

2. Raster Thread: C++ code to paint the pixels

3. Platform Thread: For native communication

Now, 1 and 3 are merged together:

1. Platform Thread: To render widgets and also for native code

2. Raster Thread: Same as usual This simplifies all native code calls by removing Future and making them synchronous. Please note that the work is still in progress and may require a migration strategy on our end.

2. How to Take Notes as a Programmer

Last year, I switched to Obsidian and started using Readwise for my content consumption. Both tools are working great. However, emphasis should be placed on simplifying things.

🪶 Quotes from Books

📦 Code from Packages

1. Flutter Fastlane Action

This Flutter package provides a one-step CI/CD solution for Flutter apps. For a project without any Fastlane setup, it automatically configures all necessary Fastlane settings, builds your Android and iOS apps, and deploys them to Google Play and the App Store with zero manual setup. Developers only need to provide six essential configuration values in GitHub Secrets.

2. ente/mobile

Ente is a service that provides a fully open source, end-to-end encrypted platform for you to store your data in the cloud without needing to trust the service provider. On top of this platform, we have built two apps so far: Ente Photos (an alternative to Apple and Google Photos) and Ente Auth (a 2FA alternative to the deprecated Authy).

3. lightyeardev/volt

Effortlessly manage asynchronous data fetching, caching, and real-time data delivery with minimal code.

Subscribe now

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. One of My Greatest Fascinations

2. Advanced Time Management Principles: Thread

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Shot-Scraper

A command-line utility for taking automated screenshots of websites

😂 Fun and Memes

1. life of an AI startup founder/CEO

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

Most people do great work, but they don’t have a proper place to store or organize their work and experience.

I am a productivity nerd and whenever I see an app that claims to improve my productivity by organizing my work, I’ve most probably used it. I’ve tried Todoist, Evernote, Notion, Google Keep, Trello, GitHub Kanban, and many other similar tools.

I’ve switched between these tools every year or two because I found something missing in one app that I discovered in another app. This cycle continued for 7 years until I finally settled down with just using a notebook and pen. The attached photo contains my 3-year journal, which basically sums up all my 3 years of work, my thoughts, my feelings, and my experience.

However, in order to be productive and organized, you need a system. For me, the Bullet Journal system works. The beauty of this system is that it’s highly customizable based on your needs. If you don’t find a feature, you can create it yourself, plus it’s your personal customized Bullet Journal version.

Also, looking back at your handwritten notes triggers a nostalgic feeling similar to how a similar smell or listening to an old song does. I’ve never felt this in an app when I was looking through my old notes.

Additionally, you remember more. Studies have shown that people remember things better when they’ve written them by hand. Apart from that, we as humans remember physical objects a lot more compared to digital ones. Hence, having a notebook and pen with us will help with memory retention and organization.

What is your best tool or hack to organize your work? Hit reply - I love hearing these stories.

Leave a comment

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Pipe Operator in Dart

2. Prefer Extension Type over Extension

3. Fibonacci using Loop

Share

💼 Jobs to Apply:

1. Expert Flutter Consultant : Ello San Francisco, CA

We’re in the process of setting up our core app architecture & establishing key design patterns that will shape & define how we build agent-driven experiences and architectures. If you or someone you know is SF-based, is an expert in all things Flutter, and is interested in working on exciting technology in a highly collaborative domain that shapes kids’ education, we’d love to speak with you!

Salary Range: not mentioned.

2. OLX - Senior Mobile Engineer : OLX Remote

Join our Mobile App Platform team, working remotely from Poland or Portugal. As part of our 1,000+ tech team across multiple locations, you’ll collaborate with engineers, SREs, and product teams to build scalable, high-impact solutions, while reporting to an Engineering Manager who will support your growth and impact.

Salary Range: not mentioned.

Subscribe now

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Everything I Know About Good API Design by Sean Goedecke

For the developers who build them, APIs are complex products that they spend time designing and polishing. But for the developers who use them, APIs are tools that they use in order to accomplish some other goal. Any time they spend thinking about the API instead of about that goal is time wasted.

2. Claude Code- Best Practices for Agentic Coding by Engineering at Anthropic

I started using Claude Code last month. I watched many videos on best practices that are derived from this great document.

3. Why Is India’s Most Health-Conscious Workforce Also Its Sickest? by Filter Coffee

Health information is available to everyone, but health expertise is not. People are trying to solve complex nutritional problems with Instagram trends or ChatGPT instead of expert guidance.”

Healthcare workers, ironically, know the most about well-being but face the highest stress thanks to night shifts and unrelenting schedules. Consulting and banking bring big paychecks but normalize alcohol-heavy client dinners. IT workers pop supplements more than anyone else but still undersleep and undersweat. Manufacturing, by contrast, shows the best physical activity simply because the jobs demand it

4. How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts by Ibrahim Diallo

Leadership in technical environments isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about being the most effective translator. Your value isn’t in having all the expertise. It’s in recognizing which expertise is needed when, and creating space for the right people to contribute their best work.

For example, to communicate...

Developer language: “The authentication service has a dependency on the user service, and if we don’t implement proper circuit breakers, we’ll have cascading failures during high load.”

Product language: “If our login system goes down, it could take the entire app with it. We need to build in some safeguards, which will add about a week to the timeline but prevent potential outages.”

Executive language: “We’re prioritizing system reliability over feature velocity for this sprint. This reduces risk of user-facing downtime that could impact revenue.”

5. UTF-8 Is a Brilliant Design by Vishnu Haridas

I love good design decisions that work for decades and are also backward compatible.

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Keynote - The Future Is Written in Dart - Eric Seidel | Fluttercon EU 2025

The gaming industry figured out profitability 30 years ago with tools like Unity, Unreal, Blender, and more. We aspire for similar success in the app industry.

2. How I Automated My Newsletter Using AI. It’s Not What You Think

In this video, I want to talk about how I automate my newsletter with a combination of deterministic tools like Python, Readwise, and Obsidian, and non-deterministic tools like OpenAI API, Claude, and Cursor. I will also explain my system on how I collect content, save notes, export notes, process notes, and create the final newsletter.

3. New GitHub CLI Crash Course - First Look

• Forking using the CLI is much easier when using upstream to stay up to date.

• Creating and managing gists is also very simple.

  Leave a comment

📦 Code from Packages

1. Shake

A Flutter package to detect phone shakes with directional information.

2. Spot

Spot is a toolkit for Flutter widget tests.
It simplifies queries and assertions against the widget tree (better finder API called spot) and visualizes the steps of a widget test as HTML report with automatic screenshots, the Timeline.

3. immich-app/Immich

High performance self-hosted photo and video management solution

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. This TikTok Video Has Ben living rent-free in my head for weeks

2. In Over 15 Years of Open Source

3. These are images of the most Advanced mainstream GPU clusters

Share

😂 Fun and Memes

1. This is too good

2. Try Catch Console Log

3. My Games Collection 🎮

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

How Fundamentals Give You an Unfair Advantage

Usually this newsletter is all about Flutter and AI, but today I want to talk about the importance of fundamentals.

Learning programming fundamentals is like learning to drive. You don’t start by memorizing where the windshield wipers are in a Tesla vs a Toyota. You learn steering, braking, acceleration - the core concepts. Once you master those, you can drive any car on any road.

Similarly, if you learn fundamentals, you can work with any framework or programming languages (these developers are in high demand).

So don’t jump to solutions with frameworks or programming languages. Understand the problem on a fundamental level first.

Steve McConnell in Code Complete 2 puts it perfectly:

“Don’t learn to program ‘in’ a language, rather learn programming ‘into’ a language.”

Let’s say you’re searching for a product on a website. Rather than focusing on which standard library function you’re going to use for this, you should think about what kind of search you’re looking for.

• Does it involve linear search or binary search?

• Are there search to specific properties?

• Or is it a full-text search on the product object?

Once you understand how different kinds of searches work, you can apply this principle to other languages as well.

So if fundamentals are so important, why isn’t everyone doing it? A similar question can be asked about exercise - if exercising is healthy, why isn’t everyone going to the gym? Because focusing on fundamentals is HARD. Going deeper into any concept or understanding the true problem is HARD. That’s developer avoids it.

So Try HARD things. Learn Fundamentals. This will give you an unfair advantage in the job market.

What fundamental concept changed your programming style? Hit reply - I love hearing these stories.

Leave a comment

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won’t replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Avoid Prop Drilling in Flutter

2. Speed up Flutter tests in CI.

Share

💼 Jobs To Apply:

1. Lead Mobile Software Engineer at Nu

This role will involve working across a variety of technologies, including Native, Flutter, and related frameworks. We are looking for a Mobile Engineer with solid experience to join the App Core team — a cross-impact engineering team responsible for building and maintaining the core infrastructure of the mobile application, optimizing our performance, and enabling product teams to deliver high-quality mobile experiences.

Salary Range: not mentioned.

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. AI Coding by George Hotz

English is a non-deterministic language. One word can have different meanings for different people in various contexts. Similarly, AI models are trained to interpret words differently based on their training on given data. However,Programming languages, on the other hand, are highly deterministic; terms like “for loop” and “class” have consistent meanings for everyone.

2. Troubleshooting Flutter <-> Unity integration by Matthew Groves

Version conflicts with gradle, plugins, kotlin and ndk version were a nightmare. It’s a similar story for our team as well when we were integrating Unity in Flutter as AAR in Android and as Pod in iOS.

3. Extension types by Dart Team

Extension types serve the same purpose as wrapper classes, but don’t require the creation of an extra run-time object, which can get expensive when you need to wrap lots of objects. Because extension types are static-only and compiled away at run time, they are essentially zero cost.

Extension methods (also known just as “extensions”) are a static abstraction similar to extension types. However, an extension method adds functionality directly to every instance of its underlying type. Extension types are different; an extension type’s interface only applies to expressions whose static type is that extension type. They are distinct from the interface of their underlying type by default.

4. Demystifying Union Types in Dart, Tagged vs. Untagged, Once and For All by Majid Hajian

In any language, the type system can be very difficult to understand.This blog discusses one of the most complex type systems called union, which is supported in TypeScript and other languages.

However, this feature has been requested in Dart for a long time, but Dart Team has not yet added it because they think this is not necessary; union in dart can be build with sealed classes. Also some other union type packages are also available.

A great blog post explaining union types in great detail with excellent, concise examples. A must-read for everyone.

5. Jokes and Humour in the public Android API by ROllerozxa

Do we have something similar in Flutter?

6. When the Job Search Becomes Impossible: Three Phases of Burnout by Jeff

After my B.Tech graduation, I was unemployed for 1 year. And When I transitioned to freelance work 4 years ago, I faced periods of unemployment time lasting 1-2 month each year. Previously, finding the next project or job was extremely difficult. Each rejection email made me question my choices, making everything feel futile until securing the one project I needed. All three phases mentioned in the blog resonate with almost every developer who is looking for a job.

Subscribe now

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Cornell AI history lecture

• Human understand scale changes occur in days or hours, not in years.

• AI Leverage: Multiply your input.

• With AI, the opportunity cost of not learning is high.

• AI will be used for Knowledge Synthesis.

2. These 5 iPhone AI Tips Changed How I Work

I use Drag and Drop media very rarely, but now I should use it more often.

Leave a comment

📦 Code from Packages

1. App Deploy Screenshots

A Flutter package for automatically generating app store screenshots across multiple devices and platforms. Perfect for creating deployment-ready screenshots for iOS App Store and Google Play Store submissions.

2. Dependency Validator

A tool to help you find missing, under-promoted, over-promoted, and unused dependencies.

3. Extension Type Unions

Support for union types in Dart has been requested at least since 2012. This repository provides a basic level of support for union types in Dart.

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. The Dangers of Being a Compulsive Analyst

2. Everything that’s wrong with Google Search in one image

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. vb.lk

A tool where you type the link name in neutral English language will search for things on appropriate platforms like ChatGPT, Amazon, Wikipedia, or YouTube. A natural language way for finding things via links.

😂Fun and Memes

1. ServerlessHorrors

2. Dad builds magical memory keeper!

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

📝Post of the month:

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won't replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. AI rules for Flutter and Dart

2. Find package versions by tag pattern in Dart 3.9.0

3. Impact of context on your prompt

4. Six text-to-image prompting tips for Nano Banana

Share

💼 Jobs To Apply:

1. Founding Engineer – Mobile (Flutter, Full-Stack)

You will be the technical owner of Pocket’s mobile experience end-to-end. You’ll lead Flutter development across iOS/Android (and Flutter Web where appropriate), shape our full-stack architecture, and build the systems that make Pocket fast, reliable, and delightful. This is a founding role: you set the bar for code quality, design fidelity, and execution speed.

Salary Range: 120,000 – $185,000 + meaningful equity.

2. Working Student Software Engineer Flutter (m/f/d) at 1KOMMA5°

We are looking for a Working Student Software Engineer Flutter to join our Heartbeat Tech team in Berlin, Hamburg, or Munich. The Heartbeat Tech team drives the development of our end customer app, helping users understand how they generate, store, and consume energy in their homes. You’ll get hands-on experience working at the intersection of software, hardware, and clean energy — and help build the tools that empower thousands of households across Europe.

Salary Range: not mentioned.

3. Senior Software Engineer, Flutter at Headspace

Headspace is seeking a skilled and driven Senior Software Engineer experienced in Flutter to join our Engagement org. In this role, you will be instrumental in designing, developing, and maintaining scalable, high-quality mobile applications that bring Headspace's mission to life. You’ll collaborate with cross-functional teams to prototype, architect, and implement innovative solutions that enhance the functionality, performance, and user experience of our mobile platform. Using Flutter, you’ll build engaging and reliable applications that seamlessly integrate with our backend services and deliver value to our users.

Salary Range: $122,400-$195,500 + equity + benefits

Leave a comment

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy by Tim Ferriss

The modern world is especially lacking in good responses to such feelings: religion no longer provides the universal ready-made sense of purpose it once did, while consumerism misleads us into seeking meaning where it can’t be found.

2. Being Good Isn’t Enough by people, ideas, machines

Technical skill is your chosen craft. Product thinking is knowing what’s worth doing. Project execution is making sure it happens. People skills are how you work with and influence others.

3. The Death of the Corporate Job. by Alex McCann

Using Corporate jobs as funding mechanism to to build the business you love on side. Once that’s done you left the corporate world

However be aware that some influencer sell this idea way to much. To sell there course. Assess your own situation independently

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. LLMs for Devs: Model Selection, Hallucinations, Agents, AGI – Jodie Burchell | The Marco Show

The most sensible and logical podcast on the topic of AI is this one. Below are the key takeaways:

• AI model growth has flattened. The new models we see are now better agents wrapped around existing models.

• Don’t use AI models for medical examinations. Because the biggest challenge with training AI models is assessing the output.

• Don’t use a generalized model for everything; it’s like choosing the best framework or programming language for a given application. Use a specific LLM model designed for the application’s needs.

• AI Patterns:

  • RAG: Search before giving output; verify factual knowledge.

  • Agent: Step-by-step instructions; thinking in systems.

  • MCP: Call third-party applications from the model; automated querying from external services.

  • Thinking: Another wrapper acting as a thinking agent on top of the base model.

• For personalized LLMs: do fine-tuning; don’t build models from scratch—it’s expensive.

• There is no shortcut to obtaining good-quality data.

• For sustainability, we need small, focused, and performant models.

• AGI is nowhere near; nobody has a clear definition of AGI or how to measure it.

  Subscribe now

2. Code Complete with Steve McConnell

When I say Read more timeless software engineering books in AI world. I meant exactly this kind of book. The Code Complete 2 was writter 25 years ago but it is still relevant today. Its a 900 pages long book but it is worth reading.

3. Full Tutorial- Build an AI Life Co-Pilot With Claude Code in 25 Minutes | Alex Finn

This video has inspired me to build my own AI newsletter agent to automate this newseltter. Going to post a video on YouTube soon. Subscribe to my channel to get notified.

4. How to Migrate to 16 KB Pages

Every year it is a ritual to make sure your Android app is up to date with Play Store policies. 😭

📦 Code from Packages

1. Screwdriver

A dart package aiming to provide useful extensions and helper functions to ease and speed up development.

2. Riverpod 3.0

A reactive caching and data-binding framework. riverpod.dev Riverpod makes working with asynchronous code a breeze by:

• handling errors/loading states by default. No need to manually catch errors

• natively supporting advanced scenarios, such as pull-to-refresh

• separating the logic from your UI

• ensuring your code is testable, scalable and reusable

  Share

🔖Post I Found Useful

1. Google’s strategy: Kotlin and Flutter side by side? What’s the real long-term play?

2. The Relationship You Have with Uncertainty...

3. Ask HN How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

🛠️ Tool I Found Useful

1. Convert any page into markdown

2. FabPic- All-in-One Social & Marketing Graphics – Pay Once, Use Forever

😂Fun and Memes

1. Session Expired Page on Income Tax Website

2. MKBHD to Apple- Fix Your Alarm Clock! 🔥⏰ #iphone17

3. Gaming in Your 30s

PS1 was the best gaming console of my childhood. However, I lost interest in gaming in my 20s. Now that I am in my 30s, I have a lot of responsibilities and very little time for relaxing. This year, I started gaming again and I love it. I no longer see gaming as a waste of time.

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.

📝Post of the month:

Flutter with AI Workshop

AI won't replace you. But a person who knows how to use AI will. If you are a Flutter developer and want to leverage AI in your day-to-day workflow, I am planning to run a workshop.

Checkout more details on flutterwithai.com

Apply Now

💡Flutter/AI Tips:

1. Best use case for Dart Generator in Flutter

2. How to fix 16 KB support issue

3. Interactive offline real-word park map in Flutter

Share

💼 Job To Apply:

Senior Flutter Engineer at Florence

Join as our Lead Flutter Engineer and take ownership of our mobile platform. You'll be taking on two established applications with support from our Director of Engineering

Salary Range: £60-100k

Flutter Developer ( Middle/Senior) at Evertech

We’re seeking a skilled and experienced Flutter Developer (Middle/Senior level) to join our dynamic and fast-growing team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and building high-performance mobile applications for both iOS and Android using the Flutter framework. You’ll work closely with product managers, designers, and fellow developers to deliver seamless, user-friendly experiences and scalable app solutions. This is an exciting opportunity to make a meaningful impact on products used by thousands.

Salary Range: Not Mentioned

Multiple Jobs at Shorebird

We have one successful product with thousands of monthly users, delivering 10s of millions of updates around the globe, every month. We built this all with 2 engineers. We also recently launched a second product which is also growing. We simply need more engineers to keep up with our growing user base and ambition.

✍🏻 Articles to read:

1. Why I Love Bluey (And Hate Cocomelon) by Trungphan2

Bluey has a creative process. Cocomelon is processed. The former works off of a formula for what the audience might like. The latter is an expression of a single person’s unique taste.

Similar to creative vs. processed content, we look for perfect AI prompts to build apps as demonstrated by YouTubers. These "prompts" are highly processed “prompts” to showcase that everything works perfectly, but in reality, they don’t provide consistent behaviors.

2. New Manager Essentials: A Practical Guide to Your First Months in Leadership by Busra Koken

You don't have to rush into decisions when you are not fully informed or have an opinion yet.

3. My Favorite Use-Case for AI Is Writing Logs by Normcore Tech

We find stepping through a program less productive than thinking harder and adding output statements and self-checking code at critical places.

Clicking over statements takes longer than scanning the output of judiciously-placed displays. It takes less time to decide where to put print statements than to single-step to the critical section of code, even assuming we know where that is.

Leave a comment

📺 Videos to Watch:

1. Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding With Steve Yegge

• Google ran an experiment where they reviewed anonymous CVs. 60% of the CVs they rejected were their own hires, i.e. from Google.

• Everyone will now build small software, much like how everyone currently makes videos, following a trend similar to photography. Therefore, there will be a higher demand for software jobs.

• For VIBE coding: Find the smallest possible task and ask AI to do it. After that, review every line of code. To do this effectively, you should be familiar with the programming fundamentals.

2. Python- The Documentary | an Origin Story

• In the 1990s, the cost of computers was higher than that of programmers themselves. Hence, building a new programming language was considered a high ROI.

• The prototype version of Python failed because it was not marketed enough in the non-internet era.

• At that time, Someone bought the python.com domain and now hosts a porn site. They need to ask users to go to the python.org site.

• The Python 3 release was hated by the community. There were no new features added and the migration was painful, especially the way Unicode was handled.

• The hate came by introducing warlus operator in python leads to Guido van Rossum resigning from the python community.

3. Everything You Need to Know About REST

If I get fed up with mobile development, I try to do some backend work. I found this good video to brush up on my basics.

• REST is a specification and its less verbose and has a great performance incentive compared to SOAP.

• In REST, the URL should identify the resource and not the action.

• The downside of REST is the JSON serialization on both sides, and retry and other mechanisms need to be repeated for each request.

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📦 Code from Packages

1. Motor

A unified motion system that brings together physics-based springs, duration-based curves, and Flutter's animation system under one consistent API.

2. cupertino_native

Native Liquid Glass widgets for iOS and macOS in Flutter with pixel‑perfect fidelity.

This plugin hosts real UIKit/AppKit controls inside Flutter using Platform Views and method channels. It matches native look/feel perfectly while still fitting naturally into Flutter code.

3. flutter_vst3 Toolkit

This toolkit enables developers to create professional VST® 3 audio plugins with modern Flutter UIs while leveraging the power of pure Dart for real-time audio processing. Zero C++ knowledge required.

😂Fun and Memes

Lid Angle Sensor

A lid angle sensor utility created by Sam Gold for MacBook Pro models from 2019 onwards. The utility detects the lid angle and can play a sound effect.

HOW TO Create an Auto Clicker Macro With the Swiftpoint Z2!

👋🏻 That’s it, Folks

I am currently open for consultation part-time/full-time, specialized in mobile development with Android and Flutter. So if you are looking for someone to:

1. Build product architecture from scratch

2. Train existing developers to level up

3. Fix major bottlenecks in legacy codebase

4. Improve code quality

5. And most importantly, ship things faster

then reach out to me at info@burhanrashid52.com.