Interesting question on Stack Overflow: > How to query Firebase Realtime Database for top N users and current user’s rank Since RTDB hasn't significantly changed in a decade, I wrote up some definitives and provided lots of relevant links. :) stackoverflow.com/a/...

This year I am thankful for the Flutter / Dart community, and its continued ability to spend significant time discussing any topic that one person shares somebody else's hearsay opinion on. 💙

> "If there's one thread through everything I've done, it's this: I want more people to build more apps. Every new builder we empower, whether they write code or drag and drop, expands what's possible in tech." — puf Hear the full @VGVentures podcast: www.linkedin.com/pos...

If everything goes well when you're presenting live on stage, you might as well have sent a video recording. Embrace whatever happens. There are no failures, just shared experiences. #DevRelThings

Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

Firebase is bringing Crashlytics support to web apps. Yes, you read that right: Crashlytics for Web is finally be happening. Chime in on the RFC here: github.com/firebase/...

The new Photo To Video AI tool in Google Photos is so much fun to play with! 📸➡️📽️ I mean... I'm definitely quite comfortable on a large stage, but I even I never did *this* on the main stage of Google I/O. At least, not while the camera was rolling! 😂 Org photo 👇

I wrote about the Hearts in San Francisco public art project before, which places large heart-shaped statues all over San Francisco. Here are two more of them on Union Square: * Double Delight–Michael Osborne * There is no try–Lawrence Noble More on puf.io/socials/2025-...

🗽 Public Art Spotlight: Glass Goddesses at Trinity Place ✨ 7 stacked-glass sculptures carved with classical figures 💡 Gorgeous by day, glowing by night 📍 1177 Market Street, San Francisco puf.io/socials/2025-...

At DevFest Silicon Valley a few weeks ago, I had a chance to sit down with Michael Clark - head of AI Agent at Google Cloud. We talked about how AI is changing work, and how to best make use of that in your career. Link + quotes in first comments 👇

🥞 New spot coming to Valencia 👀 SF Mission’s Kitchen - the popular Mission St brunch spot that always has a weekend line - is opening a second location on Valencia. The old Flor de Cafe space is getting a glow-up. 📍1020 Valencia 🗓️ Coming soon puf.io/socials/2025-...

📚 Awaken Online: Happy by Travis Bagwell (aka Book #5.5 in the series) ★★★★★ This is the 12th book I’ve read in this VR-litRPG universe - and one of the best yet. Here’s why 👇 1/3

📖🇷🇺 Finished Crime and Punishment - my third Russian classic after Brothers Karamazov and War﹠Peace. I started for the cost-per-page, but stayed for the story. The Audible narration grew on me, and the ending tied things up nicely. ★★★★★ Review: puf.io/books/crime-a...

Just finished 12 Miles Below by Mark Arrows - icy world, killer machines﹠a non-stop battle stretch that had me torn on rating. I rounded up, but won't continue the series for now. ★★★★☆ ❄️ Fantasy 🤖 Post-apocalyptic Earth ⚔️ Battle-heavy Link in first comment 👇 1/2

I told Gemini/Nano Banana to make a movie poster for Wicked in the style of John Wick. Wick? Or Wicked?

Just managed to one-shot a video transcription CLI tool (3000+ LOC including tests). How I did it: - Written a detailed spec (with some help from AI) - Used my own custom /plan and /work sub-agents Claude code did all the work -> AI Agents are getting better! Quick demo 👇

Firestore scales wonderfully for reads, but not so much for aggregations/counts. Have a huge collection and want to know roughly how many docs are in it? ⒈ If document IDs are uniformly distributed ⒉ Read 100-200 document IDs ⒊ Do some math 🧮🪄 puf.io/posts/firesto...

> "We've built this mythology around Al like it's a sentient co-worker. It's not. It's a tool, a new kind of hammer. The question isn't what Al can do — it's what you'll do with it." - puf Listen to the entire podcast on @VGVentures:

Oh hi there, nano banana pro. 👋 Fancy seeing you here in my office! 💁

Seriously Google, there are 3 developer live streams going on right now (Angular v21, Firebase Database Connect, and Flutter Antigravity). It'd be nice if you could coordinate these a bit better going forward, to not fragment your audience even further!

It's official: I'm Google Antigravity's debug monkey today. I've spent the past 90+ minutes in this loop: 1. Load chrome extension it generated 2. Perform test 3. Give it the results and log output 4. Wait for update 5. Go to 1

Pebble is back ⌚️ Almost a decade after Fitbit shut it down, Pebble relaunched its e-ink watches: sunlight-readable, week-long battery, and built for simplicity. I got the Pebble 2 Duo and here’s what it’s like to use a smartwatch that still values time over touchscreens. puf.io/posts/pebble-...

📍🗺️ Geoqueries on Firestore used to mean geohashes and 5.4x read overhead. 💸 With multi-field inequalities, you can now drop that overhead to ~1.3x. But there's a catch: you now pay for index scans. Those *are* much cheaper, but... details 👇 puf.io/posts/how-to-...

I am trying out Google Antigravity, and I must say that it's interesting. My first try is a no-risk project, scraping backlinks from my own recent socials. It's so easy to start with a Dart command-line tool, and then switch to a Chrome extension (also not working so far).

New to Firestore and can't explain the document read count from your code? 😬 This usually happens when you keep the Firestore console open during development, as the console also causes charged reads. Close the console to measure just your code. 👇🧵 1/2

📚🧙⚽️ I just finished Unseen Academicals (audiobook) by Terry Pratchett. Not my favorite Discworld - the football bits didn’t quite land - but the characters (Glenda, Juliet/Jools, Nutt, Vetinari, Rincewind!) were lovely as ever. ★★★★☆ More on: puf.io/books/unseen-...

🌁 ❤️🗿 We caught another heart statue in the Hearts in San Francisco series! This time it's the ColorFall of Hope by Deirdre Weinberg, at the Bank of America in Castro. Go check it out, and (or?) find the rest of my personal list on puf.io/socials/2025-...

ChatGPT is aggressively trying to get me to install Codex today. Anyone else seeing this?

The holidays have hit Union Square (San Francisco)! 🎄🌁 Eight oversized ornaments now line Powell Street, leading up to the 83-foot Christmas tree and ice rink. If you're in SF this season, take a festive stroll. More on: puf.io/socials/2025-...

🥞 New spot coming to Valencia 👀 SF Mission’s Kitchen - the popular Mission St brunch spot that always has a weekend line - is opening a second location on Valencia. The old Flor de Cafe space is getting a glow-up. 📍1020 Valencia 🗓️ Coming soon puf.io/socials/2025-...

I'm usually not a fan of opera. I just don't like the singing style… at all. But this weekend we saw the new Monkey King opera in San Francisco and it was so visually and orchestrally spectacular that all my reservations went away. I loved it! Check it out in SF til end of Nov

I wish @dart.dev had tagged template literals for that giant sql blob. Hoping this ends up back on the roadmap soon github.com/dart-lang/la...

Yesterday's xkcd is unfortunately way too accurate. Luckily some places are reversing the trend, but it takes time. "Car Size" is licensed by Randall Munroe under CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 https://xkcd.com/3167/

With all the (valid) noise around the security holes that vibe coding may introduce, I went back to double check some of my recent commits for SQL injection and XSS problems. This first one looks fine at least... 😅 For those wondering: that's Dart code. 💙

I just discovered codewiki.google - a new way to explore git repos - and I'm already having fun with it. Here's its description of the Firebase JavaScript SDK repo: codewiki.google/gith... And its view of the (good old) Realtime Database transport layer in there. 1/2

I use an LLM differently in cases where I know "nothing" [1] vs cases where I know "everything" [2]. On [1] I check LLM output against my expectations and catch hallucinations with a chuckle/shrug. On [2] I stick to questions where LLM training data is large and in agreement.

I made a joke in my main Discord server about DOOM E1M1 being in a major key and @abigbagofkeys.sickonedude.com actually made it. Jesus fucking Christ listen to this hahahaha

> "If there's one thread through everything I've done, it's this: I want more people to build more apps. Every new builder we empower, whether they write code or drag and drop, expands what's possible in tech." — puf Hear the full @VGVentures podcast: www.linkedin.com/pos...

🎬 The Blues Brothers isn’t just a cult classic movie - it’s a film I watched every year from my teens to twenties. I just read Daniel de Visé's book about the movie and its creators: mostly John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. More and link 👇🧵

Firebase is bringing Crashlytics support to web apps. Yes, you read that right: Crashlytics for Web is finally be happening. Chime in on the RFC here: github.com/firebase/...

In our new #BuildToSucceed episode, we talk with Frank “Puf” van Puffelen @puf.io about how storytelling, mentorship, and clear communication drive better engineering. 🎧 Listen here → hubs.ly/Q03SNWGf0 #AI #BuildToSucceed #Flutter #Firebase #EngineeringLeadership #Puf #Puffelen

Developer Relations events work often feels intuition-driven: we choose our talks, swag, community, content based on feeling and experience. But you can bring structure to it using the same tool marketers rely on: the adoption funnel. Read more about it ⬇️🧵 1/3

For a recent post I wrote an intro that was a bit longer than I aimed for, so I wanted to make it collapsible. It turns out the <details> tag does precisely that, no JS needed. HTML is the gift that keeps on giving.

🥞 New spot coming to Valencia 👀 SF Mission’s Kitchen - the popular Mission St brunch spot that always has a weekend line - is opening a second location on Valencia. The old Flor de Cafe space is getting a glow-up. 📍1020 Valencia 🗓️ Coming soon puf.io/socials/2025-...

🥩 San Francisco's Tenderloin Museum celebrates the neighborhood’s gritty history, from concert halls and SRO hotels to Herb Caen’s famous line: > Any city that doesn’t have a Tenderloin isn’t a city at all Small in size﹠price, but packed with stories. puf.io/socials/2025-...

Find your most expensive and slowest Firestore queries with the (relatively) new query insights panel in the Google Cloud console. I've already been using this on my projects, leading to both a better experience for my users and a lower bill for me! 🙌 cloud.google.com/fir...

📚 Awaken Online: Happy by Travis Bagwell (aka Book #5.5 in the series) ★★★★★ This is the 12th book I’ve read in this VR-litRPG universe - and one of the best yet. Here’s why 👇 1/3

📖🇷🇺 Finished Crime and Punishment - my third Russian classic after Brothers Karamazov and War﹠Peace. I started for the cost-per-page, but stayed for the story. The Audible narration grew on me, and the ending tied things up nicely. ★★★★★ Review: puf.io/books/crime-a...

On the one hand: I'm reading [Be Our Guest][1] about Disney, which is a fun read. On the other hand: my brother brought a whole year of [Donald Duck magazine][2] with him from the Netherlands. 🤔 🤷 🎲 [1]: en.wikipedia.org/wik... [2]: www.goodreads.com/en...

Mission District flashback: The old Lucca Ravioli spot on 22nd/Valencia is now The Corner Store with pop-ups curated by Square. The York Street Collective is there through Dec and has art, coffee & non-alcoholic cocktails. Don’t miss it! More on: puf.io/socials/2025-...