Sebastien Castiel
Developer, writer, indie hacker
🤖 He/him 📍 Montreal, QC 🗣 French, English
French developer expatriated in Montreal, I always have several side projects ongoing, and I love sharing what I learn on this blog, in talks, on Twitter , or occasionnaly in books.
I am available for contract work; I can help you if:
- you need a mentor to guide you through your frontend developer journey,
- you need an experienced frontend developer to work on a project or offer guidance,
- you or your team want to learn React & Next.js.
Latest articles
- 📄 13 tips for better Pull Requests and Code Review (October 17, 2023)Would you like to become better at crafting pull requests and reviewing code? Here are the 13 tips from my latest book that you can use in your daily developer activity.
- 📄 The simplest example to understand Server Actions in Next.js (August 3, 2023)Server Actions are a new feature in Next.js. The first time I heard about them, they didn’t seem very intuitive to me. Now that I’m a bit more used to them, let me contribute to making them easier to understand.
- 📄 Intro to React Server Components and Actions with Next.js (July 3, 2023)React is living something these days. Although it was created as a client UI library, it can now be used to generate almost everything from the server. And we get a lot from this change, especially when coupled with Next.js. Let’s use Server Components and Actions to build something fun: a guestbook.
- 📄 How to give code review as a junior developer? (June 24, 2023)By focusing on learning, providing constructive feedback with a positive tone, and embracing the opportunity to contribute, junior developers can make valuable contributions to code quality and their own growth. Code reviews are essential for skill development and fostering collaboration within development teams.
Latest books
- 📘 Pull Requests and Code Review: Best Practices for Developers, from Junior to Team Lead (2023)Unlock the secrets to masterful pull requests and collaborative code reviews with practical insights from years of experience, all packed in one comprehensive guide!
- 📘 Serverless Web Applications with React and Next.js (2022)A short guide to using Next.js to create full-stack applications with React, enjoying serverless features to authenticate users and use databases.
- 📘 Create your Net Worth Tracker with Kotlin (2022)I wrote a book about Kotlin to document what I learned when I discovered the language.
- 📘 A Guide to React Hooks (2021)A book I made with the content of my interactive course useEffect.dev.
Current projects
- ⚙️ Spliit (2023)An alternative to Splitwise, no account needed
More info…
Spliit is an alternative to Splitwise. Use it to share expenses with friends and family, without creating any account.
I first built this app in 2022 while I was learning Go, then I rewrote it with Next.js and made it open source. Many developers contribute by creating issues and pull-requests.
- ⚙️ CodeBit (2023)Generate animated code videos more easily than ever
More info…
CodeBit is an online app to generate animated code videos. The kind of videos you can post on Twitter or LinkedIn to show a quick refactoring, how to use a library, or how to fix a bug.
I created this project with Maxime. We loved these videos but never found the right tool to create them without spending long hours tweaking transitions or syntax highlighting.
- ⚙️ GitHub Stars Video (2023)A video generator for your GitHub stars
More info…
GitHub Stars Video is a fun app to generate an animation of the stars on a given GitHub repository. Perfect to brag on social media!
I built it to play with Remotion.
- ⚙️ Learn React & Next.js (2023)An online course
More info…
Learn React & Next.js is an online course to help developers knowing HTML, CSS and JavaScript take the next step and add React & Next.js to their skills.
The course’s content is based on my live workshop, and adopts the approach I suggest in my post A better learning path for React.