Row-level security makes a lot of sense in an application database. A normal user should only be able to read or modify the data they are allowed to see. Then I needed a background job that had to work across multiple users and accounts.
Environment variables solved one problem for me earlier: I no longer had API keys sitting directly in source files or accidentally ending up in Git. But that led to an important distinction I had not thought enough about before. A value can be hidden from Git and still not be secret.
When a project is small, putting configuration directly into the code is incredibly convenient. An API URL goes into a service file. A project ID goes into a constant. While experimenting, an API key might end up there too.
I recently restarted my Mac, opened my React Native project again and expected the development build on my iPhone to connect as usual. Instead, scanning the Expo QR code kept opening something around localhost:8081 on the phone. That obviously did not work.
Until now, most of my experience with ChatGPT has been exactly that: talking to ChatGPT. I describe a problem, get some code, copy it into the project and continue working. This week I wanted to try something different — instead of using AI to help me build an application, I wanted the application itself to use AI.