Dev.to·Friday, January 9, 2026

Dev.to - Friday, January 9, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

I Lost an Interview So You Don’t Have To: A Lesson in Interview Prep

My own words re-written with chatGPT help. (my english is not the yellow from the egg ) Still, I was rejected. The problem? I didn’t clarify whether the next round would be framework-agnostic or focused on a specific framework. After reviewing my solution, the feedback was: “We’re happy with your code. Let’s meet the team and discuss it—we’d like to get to know you better.” That one word—“it”—is where things went wrong. I assumed it meant a project-level discussion and a broader UI conversation:

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SwiftUI #25: Estado (@State)

El paradigma declarativo no solo se trata de cómo organizar las vistas, sino de que cada vez que cambia el estado de la aplicación, las vistas deben actualizarse y reflejarlo. @State El "property-wrapper" @State envuelve un valor de tipo SomeType en una estructura de tipo State<SomeType> y notifica al sistema cuando ese valor cambia, para que la vista se actualice automáticamente. La propiedad marcada con @State debería ser private puesto que representa el estado de esa vista y no debería ser

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My First Open Source Contribution Was to an Authentication Project — And It Was Surprisingly Friendly

When I first thought about contributing to an authentication project, I honestly hesitated. Auth feels like one of those scary domains: security-sensitive lots of edge cases easy to break things hard to understand existing code Most people start open source with UI libraries, small tools, or docs. Auth feels like the opposite of beginner-friendly. But recently I contributed to an open source authentication server written in Node.js — and the experience was surprisingly smooth, readable, and educ

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I Lost $1,200 to YouTube Scams in 90 Days. Now My AI Tool Spots Fake "Make Money" Videos in 10 Seconds (Free)

After losing $1,200 to YouTube course scams, I built TruthScore—a free AI detector that reveals hidden dislikes and scam patterns. Here's exactly how to spot fake "make money" videos in 2026. December 2023. I just received my third "lifetime access" revocation email. Another $400 YouTube course—gone. Total losses: $1,200 in 90 days. Here's what all three scam videos had in common: ✅ 500,000+ views ✅ Thousands of "positive" comments ✅ Professional thumbnails ✅ Income "proof" screenshots ✅ Urg

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If you could recommend only one book, what would it be and why? 📚

Half discussion/half request. I've been searching for good reads for last few weeks and realised recommendations with story behind them where the best :P Sooo... WHAT book would you recommend and WHY? PS: As I've realised that, I've decided to build onebooklist.com. Place where you can share meaningful books, BUT only if there is story behind it. If you got some like that please share!

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How to effectively monitor regular backups

Imagine the following scenario: you created a script in bash to create a backup of a production database, say, an online store. After creating the script and adding it to crontab, everything worked flawlessly. After some time, say a month, the database became corrupted, for example, due to the installation of a faulty plugin. At that moment, you want to retrieve an updated database backup from last night and discover that the last database backup is from two weeks ago. What happened? Everything

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Mastering the Art of Analyzing and Visualizing Data in Looker

In the modern data stack, access to information isn’t enough; you need trusted, governed, and actionable insights. This is where Google Cloud’s Looker distinguishes itself from standard reporting tools. Unlike traditional BI platforms that rely on extracting data into a “black box,” Looker operates directly in-database, leveraging a unique modeling layer to provide a single source of truth for your entire organization. Whether you are a data analyst, a business intelligence developer, or a decis

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Build a ChatGPT App with Mapbox

ChatGPT Apps are a new way to build interactive experiences within the ChatGPT interface. In this tutorial, we'll explore and run a Points of Interest (POI) search app powered by Mapbox APIs that lets users find places like coffee shops, restaurants, and gas stations near any location using natural language. The focus of this tutorial is on understanding how to build a ChatGPT App using the ChatGPT Apps SDK and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The app is loosely based on the Mapbox Build a stor

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Progress First, Judgment Later: Gutenberg and AI (Bite-size Article)

Introduction Johannes Gutenberg’s printing technology was a systematization of letterpress printing developed in mid-15th-century Germany. By combining movable metal type, oil-based ink, and a screw press printing machine, it made the mass production of books and the popularization of knowledge possible. Before this, book production in Europe was dominated by handwritten manuscripts created by scribes and by woodblock printing. Producing large numbers of books required enormous amounts of lab

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Turning Images Into Game-Ready PBR Textures With Python (Offline, No Subscriptions)

Creating PBR (Physically Based Rendering) textures is a repetitive but unavoidable task in modern 3D, game development, and rendering pipelines. While there are powerful commercial tools available, many developers want something that is: Offline Scriptable or extensible Free from subscriptions Easy to integrate into existing workflows That’s why I built PBR Texture Generator Pro — a lightweight desktop tool written in Python that converts regular images into full PBR texture sets in seconds. The

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