December 2025 - Armand Thuillart
Here’s where I’m currently most productive:
I’ve tried them all. I’ve landed on Next.js because of the strong community, but disliked the propaganda of RSC (which is still experimental). That’s why I’m now using TanStack Start, because it’s the best DX I’ve found.
Building flexible, accessible components is difficult. You either use (and extend) a component library, or build your own. This is why I now use shadcn/ui.
It provides well-designed and extensible components, built on top of accessible, unstyled primitives. This includes basics like buttons and inputs, but also icons, charts, and even custom themes.
Components are styled with Tailwind CSS, the most AI-friendly CSS library. Why? This makes generating and editing code with AI tools much easier.
Tailwind uses a compiler to generate only the classes used. So while the utility CSS framework contains many possible class names, only the classes used will be included in the single, compiled CSS file.
Assuming you only write Tailwind code, your bundle will never be larger than the total set of used Tailwind classes. It’s extremely unlikely you would use them all. This means you have a fixed upper bound on the size of the generated CSS file, which is then minified, compressed, and cached for the best performance.
Convex is my go-to backend. Convex makes working with databases easy, fast and fun. I can view and modify my data via their dashboard and integrate complex features like crons, workflow, and workpool with just a few lines of code using their components.
The best part? Convex works perfectly with TypeScript.
Cursor is my go-to code editor. It helps me edit, refactor, and debug code.
It’s especially helpful for more tedious refactors, or restructuring/reformatting code. Agent has up-to-date knowledge of TanStack, React, Convex, and other web tools, so it gives me great code suggestions.
Warp is my go-to terminal. It helps me version control, pull requests, and deploy to prod.
AI tools aren’t perfect yet, but they’re a huge time saver.