AI Agents, React Conf, and Why Perfect Code Still Fails — This Week’s Must-Reads
AI dominates the world of tech news so much that sometimes it seams like nothing else is happening. Truth is far from it and that's why we start with development and marketing this week.
Dismantling marketing attribution myths (Elena Verna), the “slopification” of Main Street (Codie Sanchez), Canva’s growth strategy (Lenny Rachitsky), B2B GTM reports, the “traffic is dead” essay, Intercom’s growth engine, brand storytelling with PIM, and the voice strategies of Superhuman and Grammarly + data insights cover 2025 SEO ranking factors (SEMrush), social media salary benchmarks, Reddit trends, impact of AI on creative assets, and Facebook engagement norms (Buffer).
This week was peak “dev brain meets reality check.” We’ve got the official React Conf 2025 recap dropping all the RSC updates, a breakdown of what really tanked AWS. Performance nerds will eat this up — from Crystallize’s fast-loading Google Tag Manager guide and Next.js page transition benchmarks to Bejamas showing how Astro + Netlify can make even finance tools fly.
AI chaos meets clarity. We’ve got Chip Huyen teaching AI engineering 101, Leah Tharin explaining why your customers still can’t be simulated, and Bain predicting that agentic AI will nuke half of SaaS. Meanwhile, everyone’s debating OpenAI’s new Atlas + developers get plenty to chew on too: optimizing repos for AI agents, security risks from autonomous systems, and why “perfect code” doesn’t mean safe code.
Happy trading.
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⚙️Dev stuff
How Astro and Netlify Power Our Financial Template — A case study on building blazing-fast static sites with Astro and Netlify — practical, dev-friendly, and full of workflow takeaways.
React Server Components and Performance — Breaks down how RSCs actually impact performance in real-world scenarios, separating hype from hard data.
✨👀Fast-Loading Google Tag Manager — Shows how to optimize Google Tag Manager for speed, using async loading and smart scripts to keep Core Web Vitals intact — perfect for performance purists.
React Conf 2025 Recap — Official roundup of React Conf highlights — from React 19 to RSC improvements, new tooling, and the roadmap for the framework’s next evolution.
What Caused the Large AWS Outage —
byAn inside look at the big AWS outage: what failed, why, and how cloud reliability still isn’t as bulletproof as we think.
10 Kanban Boards That Actually Work — A surprisingly fun and visual guide to Kanban setups that go beyond Trello clichés — perfect for creative or dev teams looking to organize better.
Backbone’s Not Bad — A nostalgic yet sharp take on why Backbone.js wasn’t as “dead” as the web decided — and what modern devs can still learn from it.
Comparing Page Transition Strategies in Next.js — A hands-on performance study comparing Framer Motion, View Transitions, and other techniques for buttery-smooth Next.js navigation.
✅React and Remix: Choose Different Futures — Opinionated piece on how React and Remix diverge in philosophy — one favors incremental innovation, the other bets on full-stack harmony.
AI Crawlers vs JavaScript Websites — Explores how AI-powered crawlers interpret JS-heavy websites — and what SEOs should prepare for as search evolves beyond HTML parsing.
Designing for Tap Targets — A quick but insightful reminder on designing mobile tap targets properly — small UX detail, huge usability payoff.
Send This Article to Your Friend Who Still Thinks the Cloud Is a Good Idea — A provocative essay arguing that “the cloud” has gone too far — time to bring compute and data back closer to users.
📊Marketing stuff
A deep dive into how Canva built one of the most successful design platforms ever—covering product strategy, culture, and scaling lessons from its founders.
Storytelling with Headless PIM — Explores how structured product storytelling in a headless PIM architecture drives engagement, consistency, and faster go-to-market execution.
Why YouTube Is Turning Podcasts into Video Shows — Google’s insights on the growing convergence of podcasting and video — and why brands should think “watchable audio.”
🤔How to Stop the Slopification of Main Street — An essay on reversing the decline of small businesses by investing in quality, creativity, and community-driven capitalism.
Magic Spoon’s Podcast & Influencer Marketing Playbook —
Breaks down how Magic Spoon mastered the art of podcast and influencer partnerships to drive brand awareness and retention.
The Ultimate Guide to Reddit Trends — An overview of Reddit’s latest engagement trends and how marketers can tap into subcultures for authentic reach.
Taste Is a Competitive Advantage — Argues that taste — not just data or speed — is the ultimate differentiator for modern brands and creators.
🤼♂️💥Best PIM Platforms Compared — A detailed comparison of modern Product Information Management solutions, highlighting flexibility, scalability, and developer friendliness.
How to Figure Out What Customers Actually Want —
Practical frameworks for uncovering customer motivation, featuring examples from top startups and product leaders.
Intercom’s Growth Strategy Teardown — A full breakdown of how Intercom scaled its product-led growth engine — from messaging experiments to pricing pivots.
AI, Reviews, and Visibility in Search — Looks at how AI-generated and human reviews are reshaping Google’s visibility landscape in 2025.
Measuring Organic Growth in 2025 — Defines modern frameworks for tracking organic performance when traffic alone is no longer a reliable metric.
2025 State of B2B GTM Report —
A data-driven analysis of how B2B go-to-market strategies are evolving — from PLG to outbound reinvention.
Your Ads Don’t Suck. Your Offer Does. — Challenges marketers to rethink weak offers instead of blaming ad performance — with actionable creative fixes.
Marketing Attribution Is a Lie —
on SubstackA sharp critique of the obsession with perfect attribution — and how marketers should focus instead on narrative and timing.
OpenAI Spent $1B on Ad Load Optimization Tools — Breaks down OpenAI’s massive infrastructure spend and how it’s reshaping ad tech, model serving, and web monetization.
Google Ranking Factors (2025 Update) — A comprehensive overview of confirmed and debunked Google ranking factors — plus what’s changing in the AI search era.
Social Media Salary Data 2025 —
Breaks down salary benchmarks for social media professionals across industries and geographies.
Traffic Is No Longer Reliable — Explores why traffic is an outdated success metric — and how to refocus on engagement and revenue signals.
2025 Facebook Benchmarks — Latest engagement, reach, and posting benchmarks to guide your Facebook content strategy.
Shutting Down Lorelight — A candid post-mortem on shutting down a startup — lessons learned about focus, burnout, and knowing when to quit.
AI Marketing Assets: The New Creative Stack — Outlines how marketers can use AI to generate, test, and scale creative assets faster across campaigns.
Branding Superhuman, Grammarly, and Coda — Dissects how these brands nail clarity, tone, and distinct voice — a masterclass in product-led storytelling.
🤖AI / ChatGPT stuff
We Tested Claude Sonnet 4.5 for Writing and Editing — A hands-on review of Anthropic’s new Claude Sonnet 4.5 — how it handles editing, rewriting, and creativity compared to GPT-4 and Gemini.
33 Hot Tech Takes on Atlas: The New AI Browser by OpenAI — A roundup of developer and industry reactions to OpenAI’s new “AI browser,” Atlas — part hype, part existential crisis.
AI Engineering 101 with Chip Huyen — Chip Huyen explains the emerging discipline of AI engineering — from data pipelines to model deployment — and why it’s becoming a must-have skill.
Why AI Cannot Simulate Your Customers —
on SubstackA sharp essay on the limits of customer “AI twins” — real behavior still defies even the smartest LLMs.
Will Agentic AI Disrupt SaaS? — Deep analysis of how agentic AI could upend the traditional SaaS model — fewer dashboards, more autonomous systems.
State of AI Security Development 2026 — Comprehensive report on how AI is both powering and threatening security — from autonomous vulnerability scanners to model jailbreak defense.
When Perfect Code Fails — Reflects on why flawless engineering sometimes breaks in production — and why resilience, not perfection, is the real goal.
Atlas: The Anti-Web Browser — Anil Dash argues that OpenAI’s Atlas isn’t a browser at all — it’s the first true interface shift away from the open web.
Optimizing Repos for AI — A technical guide on how to structure, document, and clean your GitHub repos so AI agents can read and reason through them effectively.
Agentic AI and Security — Explores the new security paradigm as autonomous agents start acting on behalf of users — with practical patterns and risk mitigation ideas.
byA visual breakdown of what “AI agents” actually are, how they differ from traditional automation, and where the architecture is heading.
A friendly, updated guide to all the latest ChatGPT features — from custom instructions to app integrations — written for everyday users.
You Have No Idea How Screwed OpenAI Is —
A provocative look at the mounting pressures — legal, economic, and philosophical — facing OpenAI as it races to dominate the AI landscape.
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Happy reading /bookmarking!
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