Landon Robinson

Cursor strips away some of VS Code’s extension ecosystem and deep settings, which is a trade-off. You gain a more coherent AI experience but lose a bit of the infinite tweakability that VS Code offers. For most day-to-day coding, though, the trade is worth it—especially on large TypeScript and Python projects.

Reclaim has been life-changing. I list my tasks, and it automatically finds time for them in my calendar. When a meeting gets booked over a task, Reclaim just automatically reschedules the task. It's like a personal chief of staff for my schedule. I'm getting so much more deep work done.

When you know what you're doing, Google Ads delivers the best ROI of any channel. The targeting options are unmatched. However, the interface is a complex beast, and if you have a problem, good luck getting a human on the phone. You're at the mercy of their automated system, which can be unforgiving.

Next.js used to be simple. Now with Server Actions, Middleware, and the new caching behavior, it feels like a black box. Debugging caching issues in the App Router is a nightmare. It feels like they are pushing the Vercel platform specifics into the framework. I miss the simplicity of the Pages router.

You can't run a large engineering organization without a tool like Jira. The ability to create custom workflows, automate ticket transitions, and generate detailed reports on velocity and cycle time is critical for managing work at scale. It's a complex tool for a complex problem, and it does its job well.

We implemented Algolia for our e-commerce site and the difference was night and day. The typo tolerance and instant results increased our conversion rate by 20%. The developer experience is top-notch with great documentation and SDKs. Setting up faceted search took us days instead of weeks.

The Instagram grid planner in Buffer is excellent. Being able to visually plan how our feed looks before posting is key for our brand. The browser extension is also super handy for grabbing articles and queuing them up for LinkedIn. It's a simple, joyful tool to use daily.

The built-in pgvector support meant I didn't need a separate vector database (like Pinecone) for my AI app. I keep my embeddings right next to my user data. It simplifies my stack immensely. The new AI wrapper for generating SQL queries is also surprisingly helpful.