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Abdulkader Safi web and mobile application development blogs
Mastering rsync: The Ultimate Command for Fast Code Deployment and Server Syncing
When you’re managing a live web app, keeping your local code in sync with your production server can be a tedious (and risky) process. Uploading files manually or running half-baked FTP scripts is slow and error-prone. That’s where rsync comes in — a lightning-fast, reliable, and secure command-line tool that makes syncing code to your server effortless. In this post, we’ll break down what rsync is, why it’s powerful, and how I’ve automated it in my workflow using npm scripts for one-line deployment.
When Should You Keep jQuery in an Existing Project?
A Practical Guide for Project Managers and Senior Developers For more than a decade, jQuery was the undisputed champion of front-end web development. It smoothed over browser inconsistencies, simplified DOM manipulation, and made AJAX accessible before native APIs caught up. But today, in an era dominated by modern frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelte — and with powerful browser-native APIs — teams often face a question:
PyTorch vs TensorFlow: A Beginner Developer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Framework
When I first stepped into the world of AI and Machine Learning, I was overwhelmed by the number of tools, frameworks, and buzzwords floating around — from transformers to tensors, gradient descent to GPU acceleration. But the one question that always came up in developer communities was this:
FastAPI: The Modern Python Framework for High-Performance APIs
In the world of modern web development, speed and scalability are everything. FastAPI has quickly risen to prominence as one of the fastest and most developer-friendly frameworks for building APIs in Python.
React Native with Expo vs React Native CLI: A Developer’s Complete Guide (2025)
React Native has evolved into one of the most powerful frameworks for building cross-platform mobile apps. But when it comes to starting a new project, developers face a critical question: 👉 Should you use Expo or the React Native Community CLI? In this article, we’ll break down both approaches, with real-world developer insights, code examples, and AI-friendly structure so you can make the right decision for your next app.
What is Technical Debt? A Complete Guide for Businesses & Developers
In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses and developers often prioritize speed and delivery over long-term code quality. While this approach helps get products to market faster, it can create hidden challenges down the road. This challenge is commonly referred to as technical debt. In this article, we’ll break down what technical debt is, why it matters, and how to manage it effectively—whether you’re a startup founder, CTO, or software engineer.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Local PDFs and Ollama: A Developer’s Guide
Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4, Claude, and Llama 2 are powerful, but they have limits: they hallucinate, miss domain knowledge, and can’t stay up-to-date without retraining. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solves these challenges by combining retrieval from an external knowledge base with language generation. And best of all—you don’t need OpenAI or Anthropic APIs. With Ollama, you can run LLMs locally on your machine and power them with your own data (like PDFs in a directory).
The Toolkit of a Full-Stack Developer: My Essential Tools
Being a full-stack developer means wearing many hats—developer, designer, tester, optimizer, and sometimes even sysadmin. To stay effective and deliver high-quality projects on time, I’ve built a toolkit that streamlines every step of my workflow, from coding and design to hosting and optimization.
jQuery Crash Course (Part 3): jQuery UI with Vite
Now in Part 3, we’ll focus on jQuery UI, a collection of ready-to-use interactive widgets and effects. You’ll learn how to install it in a Vite project, initialize components, and customize them with CSS.
Crash Course: Writing HTML Email Templates Developers Can Send via SMTP
Email is one of the most effective communication channels, but writing HTML email templates is tricky. Unlike the web, where CSS grids and flexbox reign supreme, email design is still stuck in the land of **<table>** layouts, inline CSS, and weird client quirks. This post is a crash course for developers who want to build and send HTML emails directly from code (via SMTP) in .NET, Node.js, or PHP, with lots of ready-to-use layouts.
jQuery Crash Course (Part 2): Mastering AJAX with jQuery
Learn how to use jQuery AJAX in this crash course. Discover how to send GET and POST requests, handle JSON data, and dynamically update your web pages without reloading. This is Part 2 of our jQuery tutorial series.
jQuery Crash Course (Part 1): Getting Started with jQuery in Modern Projects
jQuery has been around since 2006, and while modern JavaScript (ES6+) and frameworks like React or Vue dominate today’s landscape, jQuery still powers millions of websites. Its simplicity, cross-browser compatibility, and robust plugin ecosystem make it a valuable skill for developers working with legacy projects, or when you just need something quick and lightweight.