My firsthand experience is nothing like any description — I lost my dad when I was 10. It was sudden. In the middle of the night, he was rushed to the hospital for acute appendicitis. A few days after, he died. I was young, but I understood the concept of death from TV shows. Death means you don’t get…

Originally written in Chinese on 30 March 2008. Recently I’ve been going through the old files on Google Drive. I decided to publish my short stories and essays here. Previously I only write technical articles in English on Medium but since this is the only blog I have, I thought…

Have you ever joined a hackathon? A week ago, my answer would have been no, even though I have been a full-time developer for more than 5 years. The thought of spending the whole weekend not sleeping and only coding scared me. I love my sleep! …

With React and Vue being the dominant players in the frontend field, most developers are reluctant to try out other frameworks (or libraries, the line is quite blurry with the current state of the web). I have always been a fan of framework-less approaches whenever possible and reasonable, so when…

Ask anyone who has worked with me, and you would know I am an advocate of front-end component libraries. Be it in React, Vue, Angular, or even Vanilla JavaScript, I believe the future of web lies in component libraries. But today I am here to tell you this — sometimes…

When your startup is experimenting with an idea, you need to find if people would pay for what you offer. …

Not all JavaScript developers get excited when ECMAScript has a new release. It can be annoying to be expected to continually learn new syntax, but it is definitely worth the effort for a smoother development experience. I am surprised by the number of developers around me who haven’t tried out…

From simple .css files to sassy .scss files, and to the CSS in JS styled-components, web developers have come a long way in styling the web. Building a component library with React doesn’t mean you must include styled-components. You can still use plain CSS, or SCSS files that would be…

I know some developers who are blessedly good at coding and good at being a tutor at the same time, yet very few of them would pick up the pen (or type out on their keyboard) for technical topics they are enthusiastic about. If you are one of them, I…