Frontend Snacks 🍿

I Thought My App Was Fast Until I Found This

Hey ,

A couple years ago, I realized something unexpected:

I was growing faster in my career not by doing more tutorials or chasing the next shiny framework but by finding a mentor.

Want to level up your Next.js skills?
→ Find a mentor who has shipped production-ready apps.
Want to get better at public speaking?
→ Find someone who’s done it before.

At one point, I had multiple mentors, each helping me with something specific. Their guidance made all the difference and helped me focus.
It was eye-opening and honestly, kind of addictive.

But in today’s world, it’s harder than ever to find the right mentors.

That’s when I found MentorCruise.

And they’re also sponsoring today’s issue, which I’m thrilled about.

PRESENTED BY MENTORCRUISE

If you're at a point in your career where you want to give back, or if you’re looking for support from someone a few steps ahead, you’ll love what MentorCruise is doing.

It’s a platform designed for long-term mentorship, not just one-off calls with structured plans, paid mentors, and real outcomes.

🪴 Whether you'd like to grow in your career or helping someone else grow, it’s one of the best decisions I made.

Weekly Snack: Smarter Caching 🍿

Prefer learning by video? I’ve got you. Here’s a free lesson for you ↗ that covers this exact topic.

By default, Next.js Server Components re-run every time you navigate, even if the data hasn't changed. For example,

Notice, how when we switch tabs: "this week" and then back to "this month", the data re-fetches all over again.

If your data doesn't need to be real time, why not cache it?

That’s where staleTimes comes in.

It's an experimental feature in the App Router that lets you cache dynamic segments for a few seconds without losing the benefits of dynamic rendering.

This caches the data for 30 seconds and we can always increase the time.

And you don’t always need real-time data. Sometimes, "cached for 30 seconds" is perfect.

P.S. I use this in my upcoming Modern Full Stack Next.js Course to speed up navigation and it works beautifully.

If you are not on the waitlist, simply click on this magical link 🪄 to get on the waitlist.

Latest Frontend News 🍿

Vercel AI Gateway Gateway lets you switch between ~100 AI models without needing to manage API keys, rate limits, or provider accounts.

VSCode is now an Open source Editor

AI First Design is now a thing, check it out here as Zod leads the way

🎁 I’ve made the "Why Next.js" series from my Modern Full Stack Next.js Course free for the next 48 hours (extended it). If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re using the right framework, this is your chance to go deep, for free.

Here's probably a missing tool in your Tech Stack

A solid competitor for v0 and is getting really popular

Relay Style GraphQL - an opinionated way of consuming GraphQL in a React application

Integrate React Server Components in Vite, a pull request is on it's way

Interviewers should stop asking candidates “why” during coding interviews

Dan Abramov's blog post on Static as a Server - React Server Component runs at the build time during deploy.

🎥 Weekly Youtube Videos

Check it out and subscribe to my channel ↗️ for more Frontend, Leadership and Career Development content.

Build and Deploy an AI Agent That Codes Like a Senior Software Engineer | Next.js, OpenAI, Convex

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I Thought My App Was Fast Until I Found This

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