Learn how to seed your Supabase database with this simple pattern ..read more

## Canonically Speaking: Own Your Work You've gone through the trouble of planning, outlining, and writing an article - the product of hours (or sometimes days) of work. After publishing your work on your own site, you take the time to cross-post it on Hashnode, Medium, Dev.to, and Reddit, to get more eyes on it. Great news: your work is a success! You're racking up likes and upvotes, and people are leaving thoughtful comments. Some time later, you open up an incognito window, and do a Google search for your article, and it pops up! ...but wait, why is the top result Medium, and not `yourgreat ..read more

When we started [Craftwork](https://craftwork.com), I had never used TypeScript before. I spent years building with good old fashioned JavaScript, and really loved it. I could build prototypes quickly, change my strategy on the fly, and make new features fly together without much thought. But... it was also a bit of a mess. Because JavaScript has _many_ weird quirks and "features", writing robust javascript code requires lots of discipline and experience. I certainly had some of both, but I knew from the onset that Craftwork would be a big project, and I wanted to make sure that I could build ..read more

## Open Sourcing My Design System I'm open sourcing the Figma file I use to design and create images for my personal site. It's right here, ready for you to explore: [mikebifulco.com Design System](https://www.figma.com/design/On4yRGLcYLORVBIhBejboA/mikebifulco.com?node-id=0-2431&t=XlKb5D0viU7DPV4T-1). This giant file contains almost all the images I've ever published on [mikebifulco.com](https://mikebifulco.com), meticulously organized and ready for you to explore. ## What's Inside? First off, what's in the Figma file? Here's the rundown: 1. **Brand Assets:** Logos, lockups, and even mock ..read more

We've all felt it: you're working on something new. It may be a job interview, or a creative project, or a new role at work. You're excited, but there's a nagging voice in the back of your head. It whispers in your ear -- quietly at first, then louder and louder until it's all you can hear. Maybe you're not good enough. Maybe you're a fraud. Maybe you don't deserve this. What's worse -- maybe _everyone_ else already knows. **Impostor syndrome** is a psychological pattern in which a person doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed a ..read more

Odds are, nobody has used the thing you're building. Here's why that's a good thing: According to the UX principle known as **Jakob's Law**, people spend most of their time on other sites and apps . This means that people inherently prefer your site to work _the same way_ as all the other sites they already know. **Jakob's Law** is named after UX pioneer Jakob Nielsen, who is a (now-retired) UX researcher and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. He's been a leading voice in the field of usability for over 25 years. In other words, if every list, page, and form on your site is built in a way ..read more

When building something new, what's more important: that it works, or that it looks good? That's the hypothetical that was asked recently by a startup cofounder and CTO u/FormalFuel6425 [on the Y Combinator subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ycombinator/comments/1d79vwj/does_visual_appearance_matter_more_than/). It's a great question, and one that has been asked many times before. My take? If you want to build a successful product, you need to do both reasonably well, and design needs to be a priority from the start. ## The Aesthetic-Usability Effect > The Aesthetic-Usability Effect is a p ..read more

I studied computer science as an undergrad (a while ago). At the time, it felt like the only choice on an obvious path to a career as a programmer, even though I graduated in the middle of the 2008 recession. In 2024, things are different - the job market is wildly competitive, and the path to a tech career is not as clear-cut as it once was. I see countless posts on the [/r/computerscience](https://reddit.com/r/computerscience) subreddit along the lines of _I sent 74 applications and got no interviews - what am I doing wrong?_ On the other side of the spectrum, while hiring for my own team, I ..read more

Red lobster gave away so many free shrimp that they had to file for bankruptcy. Believe it or not, this isn't a joke. Red Lobster [literally went bankrupt](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252426585/red-lobster-bankruptcy) after making their $20 all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion a permanent menu item. Their customers ate them into failure - creating millions of dollars in losses... in shrimp. So, friends: if you're working on your business plan, try not to include an all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion in the mix. That's it. That's the secret to business. ## The numbers matter as much as the produc ..read more

The endowment effect is a psychological phenomenon where people value things more highly simply because they own them. It's a cognitive bias that can be used to make your product stickier. In a [famous experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect), participants were given a coffee mug and asked to set a price at which they would be willing to sell it. The average price they gave their shiny new mug was about $7. Another group of participants were asked to set a price at which they would be willing to buy the mug. In this case, the average price was $3. ...In other words, for the ..read more