Two new tools caught my attention this week, plus a book recommendation worth sharing.
A Better Code Review
Do you regularly review pull requests (PRs) on GitHub? Do you use VS Code? I do, and I’ve never been a huge fan of the GitHub PR interface. Fortunately, I just learned about an official VS Code Extension from GitHub that makes the chore a little less “chorey.” Once you connect with your GitHub credentials (it even supports Enterprise installations), you see all your repo’s open PRs in one place. Simply click on one to expand it and see all the changes. My favorite part is that those changes are shown in context with the rest of the code. No more wondering how a particular change relates to a different, but unchanged, part of the project. You can add comments and make suggestions directly in the review window. When you’ve finished, you can commit your review right from the Description window.
Game Changer from Bolt?
Have you seen all the hype around bolt.new yet? If not, it’s an online AI development tool from StackBlitz. It’s purported to be the next generation of AI-assisted software development. You tell it what kind of software you want, and Bolt will write it for you. You can then ask Bolt to refine the app using plain English. It integrates with both StackBlitz and GitHub. The demos I’ve seen are pretty impressive, but I haven’t personally been able to replicate them to quite the level I’ve seen from others. That said, this week’s tweet (sorry, X post) announced a new feature: import from Figma. You point Bolt at your Figma URL, and it generates a pixel-perfect representation of the design in the web tech of your choice. If you use Figma, it might be worth taking a look.
Book Recommendation
Hassan Osman, a prominent self-published author and mutual X follower, recently posted an intriguing scenario: “You have $5 and 2 hours to make money. What would you do?” The scenario and follow-up discussion are in Chapter 1 of What I Wish I Knew at 20, by Tina Seeling. Intrigued by the passages he’d highlighted in his post, I headed over to Amazon, where I discovered the Kindle version is on sale for just $1.99. I immediately bought a copy and started reading it. I’m glad I did, but I’m surprised I’d never heard of the book until now. Better late than never, I suppose.
Shameless Plug
I recently lowered the prices of most of my books on Amazon. If you haven’t looked at my titles recently, I’d love it if you took a look. Maybe you missed one of them!