Samuel
Bluesky’s social-app doesn’t use any global state manager (redux/zustand/jotai/mobx etc). Why is that? 🧵 an elaboration on this post:
Samuel@samuel.fm· 11 Aug 2025
the problem I have is that it changes global state from a last resort to a first resort. thus the lowest effort solution always turns into a nightmare mess instead of being isolated and composable
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Samuel
What we do use: - plain old React context - @tanstack.com query Having used React context at scale… I have to say the react team was cooking once again. Yet another case of weird ergonomics pushing you to work in a good way. Hoisting state to context being a bit of a PITA is a feature, not a bug!
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Samuel
Adding more and more to an enormous app means by and large, stuff gets implemented in the lowest friction way. This is where composition shines. You want state to be as local as humanly possible, so it doesn’t get everywhere.
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Samuel
Global state managers on the other hand have the opposite effect. The lowest friction path becomes making your stuff global. This does not scale well at all, and becomes increasingly incomprehensible.
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Samuel
The key with using Context correctly is to only put one thing in them at a time. Got two things? Use two contexts. The danger zone is when you start putting large bundles of stuff in there, like you would a global state manager. This is obviously gonna make your whole app rerender.
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Samuel
My heuristic is to only bundle stuff into an object when it’s stuff that isn’t gonna change: functions, for example. We have a useNonReactiveCallback hook which is great for this. This means you’re not gonna cause a rerender.
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Samuel
Then if you’ve got values that might change, put em in their own context. This means they won’t trigger rerenders of anything that doesn’t need them. I messed this up recently: the controls that opens the dialogs has the functions in an object from context. The mistake was I got lazy and needed…
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Samuel
to also pass down an internal value to another component, so I stuck it in the same object. This value changes every time you open a dialog, so even though it’s only *used* in one place it gets *consumed* in many many places, triggering unnecessary renders. This is such an easy fix: just move it out
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Samuel
Conclusion: react context is good actually and pushes you towards good code. You just need a bit of hygiene when using them: mostly just avoid bundling stuff together! pro tip: add a displayName to your contexts so you can tell wtf is happening in your profiler
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Samuel
is it a footgun? sorta. but with react context, it's usually a case of "you're holding it wrong". with global state managers, it's impossible to *not* hold it wrong. don't make stuff global!
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Samuel
translation button on Android works again!
Bluesky@bsky.app· 14 Aug 2025
📢 1.106.0 is rolling out with various bug fixes and performance improvements. Users will also be notified of an update to our Community Guidelines and other policies. Learn more about these changes in our blog post: bsky.social/about/blog/0...
Updated Terms and Policies - Bluesky
We’re updating the language in our terms and policies to better explain our approach and provide more detail.
bsky.social
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Samuel
been trying to persuade the algo team to add a Poison meter to Discover but they don't seem to want to go for it
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Samuel
ooh this is fun release! faster ios builds is huge! and predictive back gesture is exciting
React Native@reactnative.dev· 12 Aug 2025
We are excited to announce the release of React Native 0.81! 🎉 This new version brings Android 16 support, faster iOS builds (experimental), and several bugfixes. reactnative.dev/blog/2025/08...
React Native 0.81 - Android 16 support, faster iOS builds, and more · React Native
Today we are excited to release React Native 0.81!
reactnative.dev
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Samuel
oooh and of course my most anticipated change: allowSwipeDismissal on Modal fiiiinally the bsky post composer can be dismissed smoothly!!
allowSwipeDismissal
• iOS
Controls whether the modal can be dismissed by swiping down on iOS. This requires you to implement the onRequestClose prop to handle the dismissal.
Type
Default
bool
false 2 9
Samuel
iOS26 Beta 6 app open/close animation is actually so fire. they’re cooking with this one
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Samuel
good news: massive perf win found bad news: it was my code that made it slow in the first place
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Samuel
average github copilot PR review: there's a typo on the line where you fixed a typo
Git diff where "backgground" has been changed to "background"

Copilot There's a typo in the comment: 'backgground' should be 'background'. 6 9 152
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