Aaron Alaniz
banner
aaron.alaniz.xyz
Aaron Alaniz
@aaron.alaniz.xyz
Grateful husband and father of three. Android engineer at Block
📍Corpus Christi, TX 🌊
🌐 aaron.alaniz.xyz
🤘🏽UT Alumni 2012
Reposted by Aaron Alaniz
Here's some tangible productivity gains I've found for using AI!

blog.mmckenna.me/microdosing-...
Microdosing AI for Mobile Dev
Small usages with real productivity gains
blog.mmckenna.me
October 27, 2025 at 1:16 PM
chromecast: 60% of the time it works all the time ✨
August 22, 2025 at 1:56 PM
I am teaching my son how to play catcher and one new thing I notice catchers doing is showing the target briefly and then placing the glove on the ground. I presume this is so they only catch the ball coming up into the zone as opposed to trying to frame a low pitch. Fascinating!
July 30, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Aaron Alaniz
Trailblaze got some new updates today! There's an official yaml spec defined in the trailblaze-yaml module. The examples will be updated by the end of this week.

There's also new memory tools available so the agent can remember screen state for later assertions.
github.com/block/trailb...
GitHub - block/trailblaze: AI-driven mobile testing framework.
AI-driven mobile testing framework. Contribute to block/trailblaze development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
July 16, 2025 at 7:22 PM
As an Android developer I basically have zero visibility into what is happening in Java beyond JDK 8. I am not sure which came first, but it is nice to see convergence on similar concepts like data classes and records.
July 14, 2025 at 5:45 PM
I gave Omarchy a try and it has made a ten year old laptop fun again. 💻🖲️

aaron.alaniz.xyz/omarchy-trial/
Omarchy Trial
There is a lot of sameness in technology these days ­and while convergence is fine, it's nice to explore. The announcement of Omarchy­ – an opinionated Arch Linux + Hyprland setup – reminded me of the...
aaron.alaniz.xyz
July 14, 2025 at 12:53 AM
I always looked forward to showing my kids the Ocarina of Time — the look of satisfaction after completing the first boss battle, priceless ✨

What a timeless game
June 28, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Shift + Esc — the best OOO feature ever made in Slack
June 16, 2025 at 2:16 PM
I discovered that my son has been using my debit card pin code as the password to the playground forts at recess. 🔓
May 21, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Aaron Alaniz
From a dev at a large tech company:

“We were only allowed to use GitHub Copilot as an AI IDE. It was OK. But then more and more of us used Cursor on side projects and it was *so much better*

Luckily we have have a dev platform team and we
May 9, 2025 at 1:44 PM
I just learned about the Savannah Bananas from the @acquiredfm.bsky.social IPL episode — this is so amazing. I love baseball tradition and nostalgia, but this looks so fun.

thesavannahbananas.com
The Savannah Bananas | We Make Baseball Fun!
thesavannahbananas.com
April 30, 2025 at 2:56 PM
The Fastmail bottom bar I always wanted 🙌🏼
April 29, 2025 at 4:18 PM
My favorite thing about AI is the spike in motivation to write incredible documentation — previously, the incentives were not so tangible. Now, you have immediate feedback about whether your efforts to document something are useful.
April 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM
I am enjoying shorter lower stakes blogs — here are my findings using Cursor for Android dev for a week 🚀

aaron.alaniz.xyz/cursor-week/
A Week with Cursor
Technology waves swell, crest, break onto shore, and then, some time later, mobile developers show up, board in hand. I committed to using Cursor exclusively for a week as my daily driver editor. A we...
aaron.alaniz.xyz
April 18, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Bruce delivering a sunny day himself this morning ☀️

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/a...
Bruce Springsteen Will Release Seven ‘Lost Albums’ in June
The singer and songwriter announced a boxed set featuring 83 songs, of which 74 have never been officially released in any form.
www.nytimes.com
April 3, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Two blogs in a month 🙌🏼 — watch out for feature flag drift in your UI tests.

aaron.alaniz.xyz/rollout-to-u...
aaron.alaniz.xyz
March 30, 2025 at 7:41 PM
My kids only seem to want an apple seconds after I have taken the first bite of mine. And it has to be mine.
March 19, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Aaron Alaniz
I wrote up some thoughts about the effect of AI on programmer salaries: seldo.com/posts/ai-eff...
March 17, 2025 at 12:49 AM
I have about ten rough drafts of random posts I would like to finish some day. I managed to complete one about my first time authoring a Kotlin DSL.

aaron.alaniz.xyz/kotlin-dsl/
First Time Experience Authoring a Kotlin DSL
I recently came across a file commented with // TODO convert to DSL. I use this file frequently and while I thought it could be improved, it had never occurred to me that a DSL would help. Feeling cur...
aaron.alaniz.xyz
March 16, 2025 at 11:32 PM
I tried Cursor for the first time today and it is so smooth ✨ From nothing to solution with a short prompt and some chat assisted debugging. All in place, no app or context switching. 💯💯
March 14, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Aaron Alaniz
A discussion about the differences of @github.com merge options came up at work this week.

I couldn't find a quick explainer I liked so I wrote down what I shared. I hope it's helpful!

blog.mmckenna.me/github-merge...
GitHub Merge Strategies: A Visual Explanation
Understanding Merge Commit, Squash Merge, and Rebase Merge
blog.mmckenna.me
March 1, 2025 at 3:28 PM
This must be while RuleChain exists, but I tried to get fancy composing one TestRule with another and found that it is pretty easy to forget a base.evaluate() call and pass every test suite that uses the rule. 😅
February 13, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Nothing dates me more as an #AndroidDev than frantically switching off the design view for an xml file.
February 6, 2025 at 4:31 PM
One of my favorite things to do at work is to edit somebody else's PR description to include a new line between the last line of text and an embedded media file so that the media renders correctly. 😂
February 5, 2025 at 3:19 PM