Choose Your Brain Snack

An archive of distractions, tutorials, and emotional support for your code editor.

Please Hold

There is a special kind of limbo that happens in the final stages of interviews. You finish a round, close your laptop, and suddenly the whole world goes quiet, like someone pressed pause on your stor

4 min

#25

If Statement Energy

There's a funny curve in engineering that nobody warns you about. Early on, every problem looks like a chance to prove you can build something. Later, it becomes a chance to prove you can build it rig

5 min

#24

Choose Your Own Adventure

You're standing in front of your closet. You've been there for twelve minutes. Every shirt looks fine. Every shirt also looks wrong. Your brain is doing that thing where it presents you with endless

4 min

Error 503: Motivation Temporarily Unavailable

#23

Error 503: Motivation Temporarily Unavailable

Hey friends. I disappeared for a bit not because I forgot, but because life hit the big red "shutdown" button. A few weeks ago, I was let go. No warning, no build-up, just… gone. One day I had stabil

4 min

#22

The Half-Done Project

I opened a folder today and found seven side projects in various states of limbo: a half-written poem, an idea for a small app, a journal I never finished, a sketch I left mid-line. My chest tightens

6 min

#21

99 Problems but a Config Ain’t One

You open your laptop to quickly fix one thing. Maybe it’s a color, a setting, a shortcut. Two minutes, max. Suddenly it’s midnight and you’re comparing fonts, testing color themes, and convincing yo

3 min

#20

Oops, We Forgot

Hi, it’s Buffer. So… funny story. We forgot to send you an issue. Yep. The neurodivergent developer newsletter about almost being done was, in fact, almost… not done. Classic, right? We had alarms, s

3 min

#19

Rubber Ducks and Tea Mugs

Sometimes the smartest thing on your desk isn’t your laptop. It’s the rubber duck that silently judges your spaghetti code. Or that tea mug you refuse to wash because somehow the flavor of "three-day

5 min

Brain in a box: Contain ideas not just apps

#18

Brain in a box: Contain ideas not just apps

Hey friend, your brain’s like a cluttered desk, ideas everywhere, wires crossed, tasks toppling over. But what if your brain could live in a neat, portable box? That’s Docker—your ultimate brain-in-a-

5 min

#17

Rejected by Review

You’ve finally done it. The ticket that’s been haunting your backlog for weeks is complete, your code runs, and you’re ready to click "Create Pull Request." Then comes the review. Comment after comm

4 min

#16

Tutorial Purgatory

You know that moment when you start a new tutorial and think, "This time I’ll actually finish it"? Cut to three hours later, you’ve signed up for another course because the first one used an older ver

5 min

#15

PING! …and My Soul Left My Body

You’re deep in the zone. Focus locked. Brain finally running in a single clean thread. Then PING! your computer squeals like you’ve just triggered a boss fight. Your shoulders rocket into your ears,

4 min

#14

Trust Issues with My AI Rubber Duck

As a neurodivergent dev, I genuinely love AI tools. They help me start when starting feels impossible. They hold context when my brain’s buffering. They explain things without judgment — and they don’

6 min

TypeScript Is My Noise Canceling Headphones

#13

TypeScript Is My Noise Canceling Headphones

JavaScript is chaos in curly braces. You can pass a banana into a function expecting a boolean, and JS will just shrug. No errors. No warnings. Just vibes. And hey, that freedom is kind of beautiful.

5 min

#12

404: Motivation Not Found

I've had a few folks in the Almost Done crew ask me about motivation. How I find it. What I do when I don’t. How I trick my brain into starting something, anything, when everything feels stuck in stan

4 min

#11

Infinite Loop, Baby

You ever open your editor with a sense of purpose, blink once, and find yourself 17 tabs deep in old GitHub issues, a Notion doc from 2022, and a Stack Overflow post about how to center a div? Or may

5 min

#10

The Joy of Little Dev Experiments

You didn’t mean to start a project. You were just testing something a new button style, a weird animation, maybe an idea that popped into your head while waiting for npm install to finish. Now it’s

4 min

Git Happens – Surviving Merge Hell With a Neurodivergent Brain

I just wanted to fix a typo. That’s how it always starts. One quick edit turns into a checkout spiral, a merge conflict, and suddenly Git is yelling at me in a dialect of regret I didn’t know I spoke

5 min

Half a Thousand Devs Walk Into a Newsletter...

Before we talk dopamine, chaos, or cursed side projects let me start with something real: Thank you. After last issue where I shared that my aunt passed away—I wasn’t sure what would happen. I th

4 min

T-Shaped? I’m More Like a Wiggly Octopus

Most developer advice says: "Pick one stack. Specialize. Go deep." That works for some. But for many neurodivergent developers, depth looks different. We’re often wired to notice patterns. To see ho

4 min

Deadline? I Thought You Said Lifeline

I didn’t write much this week. Right now, I’m sitting at the hospital with my great aunt. She’s receiving end-of-life care after a sudden stroke on Saturday. She’s still holding on but it’s har

6 min

Tech Tests Give Me Anxiety

I think I’ve earned an honorary degree in anxiety. I’ve done over 100 tech tests. Probably more if you count the practice ones. And every single time? I want to throw up. It doesn’t matter how long

5 min

This Wasn’t the Plan (But I Like It More)

It started, as most developer disasters do, with good intentions. "I’ll just fix that one tiny thing," I told myself - the most dangerous lie in tech. Two hours later I’d rewritten the settings page

3 min

Oops, I Refactored Again

Okay. Deep breath. I was just going to fix one thing. A label. A typo. A harmless little div. But then I noticed the padding was off. And the button component felt… weird? So I opened the file. Th

4 min

Presence Over Perfection

My two-year-old just learned how to say frontend, backend, and NO DADDY NO - often in the same breath. He squeals like a fire alarm made by Pixar, and it hits my ADHD brain like a DDoS attack. I g

4 min

Focus is a lie. And yet… here we are.

Hey friends 👋, First of all: a massive thank you to the 229 Founding Flakes who signed up before this newsletter even existed. You joined based on nothing but vibes, a half-built landing page, an

4 min

Go Deeper: Side Quests

When brain snacks aren't enough...

View All Side Quests

Deep Dive: Understanding ADHD-Friendly Development Workflows

A comprehensive exploration of development workflows optimized for neurodivergent developers, featuring practical strategies, real-world examples, and actionable tips for building sustainable coding habits.

6 min