dpb Weekly #2: AI, automation, and real-time is in focus
The AI is driving everything, from industries, to people, to innovations.
The dpb Weekly is extended issue that contains insights and reviews of what’s happening in the tech world.
Engineers today want productivity tools and speed in the feedback loop, whether it is feedback from customers or platforms. But with great speed comes a great set of bugs. That is why we must be cautious about how we use these tools.
It is one thing to be productive and another to get rusty. :-)
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Mobile
#1 Build “instant” apps with Instant
Do you build real-time apps? Do you find it daunting and challenging to rewrite the same boilerplate code to handle the CRUDs and then add user profiles, secure authentication, and observability to the apps? Well, various platforms can help you. Firebase, Supabase, etc. are a few to mention.
Another player is entering the markets. Instant is a platform that enables app developers to build “real-time” apps with less boilerplate.
The following code demonstrates their ability to handle the complex CRUD functions in literal one-liners:
// Source: https://www.instantdb.com
async function deleteTodo(id) {
// teams and todos are _immediately_
// updated. If there's an error,
// instant rolls back for you
transact(db.tx.todos[id].delete());
}The platform is not just for real-time communication, but also helps you buffer content locally for offline support.
Oh, and they’re hiring a Founding TypeScript Engineer as well, good luck! 🖖
#2 Google I/O has some solid news for Android
The line up of talks and keynotes for this year’s Google I/O is available.
The most interesting talk for me would be “What’s new in Android development tools.” The conference covers Android, AI, Cloud, and Web themes.
AI
#1 Therapy and companionship rank high
The Visual Capitalist app visualizes how people worldwide have used Generative AI (Gen AI) in their lives. In 2024, “Improve Code” was at #19; in 2025, it now stands at #8, with Generate Code at #6. This trend highlights how various aspects of Engineering have been handed over to this “junior intern”1 at office tables.
While my main focus, of course, was on how developers and Engineers use it, it was still interesting to see how therapy led the entire drive. I wish you all a happy day. 😊
#2 Why use Agentic frameworks when you can build one?
Agents are used to “do work”. But what if no agent is available to do the work you need?
Well, you’re in luck. You can build an agent that does the work you need. Claude Code is a research project (at the time of this writing) that enables you to configure the agentic frameworks. For example, you can connect Claude to MCPs (Model Context Protocol) for more specialized contexts and services.
Read more here on the Anthropic website and here for tutorials.
#3 JetBrains adds AI to their products
Well, they already had various aspects of AI in their products. However, with the new announcement, they have now made all their AI products available under a single subscription, including a Free tier. Junie — the AI product — is available in JetBrains IDEs.
I recommend starting with the Free tier to determine whether the product really works in the IDE you need to use. Users have complained that the product does not “fully” work in some respective IDEs. For example, Rider support is currently in progress. Review this ticket for details from JetBrains.
Read the entire announcement on JetBrains blog.
For Productivity enthusiasts, JetBrains recently introduced their ReSharper 2025.1 with support for C# 14 and .NET 10. These two products are currently in preview, so it is interesting to see how different companies are already starting to build products for the platforms. I’ll wait these out as it is not yet sure which features will make it into the final version of the framework (of the language and .NET).
Read here.
While we’re not covering databases in this newsletter, this stood out. Instant SQL is a new way of writing and executing SQL queries. The challenges of the current SQL workflow are
SQL is a complex language. I mean, ANSI SQL itself is complex, and with the addition of a database engine, it becomes more complex and even challenging to learn.
There has been no major improvement or change in the language specification to make it easier or usage-safe (as in type-safe) for Engineers.
Your query editors cannot produce the results until the engine executes the query.
SELECT * FROM employees;Will this execute successfully? How many columns will it return? Or, if you want to limit the columns, then
SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM employees;Will this finish successfully? What happens if the column name is incorrect?
You cannot know at " write time.” You can only find out after you have sent the query to the database engine. Instant SQL helps you with this.
Instant SQL gives you result set previews that update as you type. You're no longer running queries—you're exploring your data in real-time, maintaining an analytical flow state where your best thinking happens.
It would be interesting to see how other editors implement similar features. But it is indeed a great win for the Database Engineers and Admins.
I will cover and review the “vibe coding” trend and share my opinion and recommendations in a separate post.