Tony Alicea

@tonyalicea

Senior Experience Specialist @ NN/G | Deep Dive Technical Educator, Speaker, Dev, UX Strategist - 370,000 students and counting. Don't Imitate, Understand.

117 Following566 Followers462 Posts

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Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· 22d

What is the role of product/UX design and user research in an agentic workflow? In my first ever write-up for @nngroupux.bsky.social I'm excited to discuss UX-Context Design. Is it the future of UX design and user research? 👇

Bold white letters on a dark background: "UX-Context Design: The future of UX design and user research?"

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jul 1

Announcing my new agent skill: /de-div It cleans up div soup and helps you author semantic, accessible HTML, working with you when a semantic choice is unclear and generating a report for you to learn from at the end. 👇

Promotional graphic on a black background. Large white serif title reads "/de-div." Below it, body text: "Agent Skill to clean up div soup and help you learn to author semantic, accessible HTML." A faint dark feather-quill icon sits centered near the bottom.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jun 10

I just released my first agent skill: /do-i-understand As a technical educator for many years, I want to maintain my own skill and that of those around me. This agent skill makes sure you understand what you're shipping before you merge it. Here's how it works 👇

A dark navy graphic with white text. Large bold text reads "/do-i-understand" and a smaller line below reads "An Agent Skill to understand the code before you merge it."

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jun 1

Zero LLM is an effort to take some time without an LLM. 1) Agree to some time without AI. Do things yourself. 2) Start a session to track your time. 3) When you feel the addictive itch to ask AI for help, go to the site instead. 4) End your session and share with #0llm.

A dark box that says "Spend some time without AI" with the hashtag "#0llm" below it and the site 0llm.tonyalicea.dev.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· May 31

I had this idea. We are using LLMs too much. We need a recalibration sometimes. A bit of time where you agree with yourself to do things manually, keep your skill and your voice. Check out 0llm. If you use it, share it with the hashtag #0llm.

A dark box that reads in the center: recalibrated. #011m.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Apr 15

AI can produce faster than humans can evaluate. That gulf is widening, and it's causing burnout, apathy, and missed errors at scale. This isn't a skill problem. It's a design problem. In my new write up, I'm calling it the evaluability gap.👇

White text on a blue background: "The Evaluability Gap: Designing for Human Review of AI Output"

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Feb 24

What is the future of self-paced education in the age of AI? I've been experimenting with designing LLM-based learning experiences from the ground up, and wrote up my thinking on what I'm calling a Learning Surface.🌊

An AI computer chip with a graduation cap. Next to it says "The Future of Self-Paced Online Education by Tony Alicea".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Feb 3

New podcast episode just dropped! In the age of LLMs some devs are losing the joy of coding. How can you motivate yourself and your team while using LLM generation?

Yawning emoji with the text "Dev to Lead to Architect: Losing the Joy of Coding".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jan 15

1/6📖 I'm writing a book out in the open that you can read for free. It's on software development methodology for the AI age. Agile, Scrum, and others are falling short. AI has changed software dev, our processes need to change with it. 🧵

A drawing of a cascading series of waterfalls. To the right it says: "Cascade Methodology: Software Development Practices for the Age of AI - By Tony Alicea".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Dec 10

I'm pleased to present, for free, the first hour of my new course Understanding AI-Assisted Software Development on YouTube! This course is designed to be agnostic to any one AI tool, and instead provide a mental model and best practices for you and your team. 👇

A digital brain with the text "Understanding AI-Assisted Software Development. New Course!" on top.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 26

If your process is bad, AI will make it worse, faster. In the latest DIU podcast episode, I talk 7 specific pitfalls to avoid and how your dev team can get real wins from AI-assisted dev! 👇

Tony Alicea pointing at the title of the podcast. "Don't Add AI to Bad Process".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 24

The first hour of my new course "Understanding Modern JavaScript Frameworks" is now free on YouTube! A unique course that dives into the core concepts that JS frameworks share, so that you can confidently work with any framework, now or in the future. 👇

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 19

I'm extremely excited to announce a new home for all my courses, coaching, workshops, and more! Black Friday is on by the way, including early access to my new AI course, content for which is being dropped this week. Check out the new site, built in @astrodotbuild! 👇

A glacier, with the words: "Don't Imitate Understand. Go from dev to lead to architect and beyond. Courses, coaching, and more by Tony Alicea."

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 13

The second episode of my new Don't Imitate Understand podcast is out! In it we talk about an important skill that leads and devs should have: the ability to be Abstraction Breakers. Web dev is an ecosystem of leaky abstractions. Good architecture means understanding them. 👇

A lightbulb wearing a graduation cap. Tony Alicea above it and "Don't Imitate Understand" below it.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Oct 24

(1/10) Big Announcement! I'm incredibly excited to announce a new way to learn with me and fight skill atrophy in the age of AI. Introducing All Access Mentorship. It's a way to save money on courses from me, connect live every month, plus lots of other perks: 👇

On the right a lightbulb turned on wearing a graduation cap. Text on the left says "All-Access Mentorship. Become a Founding Member Now through Dec 31".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jun 12

1/6 📚 Something I'm excited to share: I'm now offering special group and community rates for my "Understanding React" course to student cohorts, bootcamps, learning groups, and community organizations.

📚 Something I'm excited to share:
I'm now offering group rates for my "Understanding React" course to student cohorts, bootcamps, learning groups, and community organizations.
As someone who benefited from scholarships and educational support throughout my journey, I know how much access to quality learning resources can matter. I'm happy to work with groups on pricing that makes sense for your educational mission.
🎓 Whether you're:

Running a bootcamp program
Organizing a student study group
Leading a community coding initiative
Building educational curricula

I'd love to help bring deep React training to your students. The course focuses on building real understanding of how React works internally - the kind of foundation that creates confident developers who can tackle any React challenge.
It's 17 hours of content covering React internals, updated for React 19, with a focus on understanding rather than just following along. Students walk away with mental models that serve them throughout their careers.
If you're organizing a group that could benefit from this, I'm genuinely excited to hear about what you're building. Drop me a line at hey@tonyalicea.dev with details about your program.
Link in comments below!
#ReactTraining #Education #CommunityLearning #WebDevelopment

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· May 21

🧵 Introducing Spec-Based Prompting for User Interfaces – a vocabulary for guiding AI-generated designs inspired by shot-based prompting (zero-shot, few-shot) but focused on specification detail instead of examples [1/6]

A comparison chart for Spec-Based Prompting for User Interfaces The levels are Zero-spec, Few-spec, and Full-spec.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Feb 27

Diátaxis is a popular approach to writing technical documentation. But it also explains why students get stuck in tutorial hell. Most courses fall in the "tutorials" and "how-to" quadrants; docs in the "reference" quadrant. But, in the real world, you need the understanding.

A 4-quadrant separation of "tutorials / learning", "how-to guides / goals", "understanding / explanation" and "information / reference".

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Feb 6

You can't call everything a skill issue. There's such a thing as ergonomics (a UX and DX concept). Like the masochist's coffee pot, if a tool makes it easy to do something wrong, it isn't purely a skill issue when something goes wrong.

A coffee pot with the handle placed below the spout.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Jan 11

I've realized that a key to truly getting RSCs is remembering that React co-opted the term "render", which means "client rendering" and "server rendering" are also co-opted. Made this to commemorate the moment. :D

A cartoon sketch of a quivering atom saying "Oh I am rendering...in my mind."

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Dec 23

My talk on React Compiler at @reactsummit.gitnation.org is now available to watch for free with no registration! Check it out: gitnation.com/contents/if-...

Tony Alicea standing at a podium that says "React Summit" with a projector showing Visual Studio Code in the background.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Dec 11

Really appreciated this testimonial from an Understanding React student this week. I spent 2 years carefully designing a React internals course accessible to both devs new to React *and* devs with years of React experience. I'm so glad devs of all levels are finding it helpful.

Quote praising Understanding React course: "This should be a must-take course for any React developer (even more so for people like me, with 4 years of experience, and I learned A LOT here). Every section is carefully constructed to build on the previous one and build a greater knowledge of React. You cannot say you understand React until you have studied with Tony Alicea."

Nicolás Omar González Passerino
Technical Leader | Sr. Front-End Developer
Globant

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 26

I was a bit scared of putting out a course on a topic so different from my other courses. I'm so glad to see people "getting it". It's available this week for Black Friday on Udemy for....seriously.....a ridiculously good price. www.udemy.com/course/right...

Three reviews praising Tony Alicea's course "How to Build the Right Software (and Choose the Right Stack).

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 22

Had a lot of fun being interviewed by @henrihelvetica.bsky.social at React Summit. A great conference!

Tony Alicea and Henri Helvetica at React Summit

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 20

It was so nice to meet @kentcdodds.com at React Summit! #reactsummitus

Tony Alicea and Kent C. Dodds at React Summit.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 20

Awesome to be present for @tannerlinsley.com announcing TanStack Start moving into beta. Congrats to Tanner and the team! #reactsummitus

Tanner Linsley announcing TanStack Start beta at React Summit.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 19

Had a fantastic lunch chatting with @jherr.dev and @htmx.bsky.social about the skill of debugging and lots more. Loving this conference! #reactsummitus

Tony Alicea, Jack Herrington, and Carson Gross at the React Summit conference.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 18

At this crazy awesome venue for #jsnationus watching @wesbos.com doing a great job taking us through new things in the web platform!

Wes Bos giving a talk at the JS Nation conference in front of a gigantic screen.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 18

It was great to meet @acemarke.dev in person after connecting on the Reactiflux discord! #jsnationus

Tony Alicea and Mark Erickson at the JS Nation conference.

Tony Alicea@tonyalicea· Nov 18

Had a great time at lunch talking with @addyosmani.bsky.social about Chrome dev tools! #jsnationus