I can code and I think I can code well. But for some reason, I’m just not inclined to try and become an amazing programmer. For me, with…

I recently watched A Life on Our Planet, a documentary that David Attenborough called his witness statement. He talked as if he was…

Often, I let myself believe that many people just “get it,” that they know what they want to do in life and they just dove into it and…

In two days, I will mark my first year living away from Singapore in Berlin. I moved here with my wife and dog last year when I managed to…

When Breath Becomes Air is a precious book about life as it is experienced through the lens of impending cancer-induced death. It is…

Before you know it, your face is greasy, your feet cold, and you wonder, why are you doing this? Nah, that’s not representative of life on a…

This books is part memoir, part philosophical manifesto derived from Patagonia’s founder’s experience in applying them to business…

Last week I wrote about how we don’t buy things with money but with time. What’s funny is that while I was writing that article, I was…

Most of us trade time for money. Do you deny it? In modern life we purchase things all the time. There is an ongoing pandemic trapping us at…

Deep within me, I yearn for variation. Very few things in life are truly monotonous, so when the weather actually is, it makes me sad. Most…

I’m learning German now and I wanted to find a fun way to remember words. Yesterday, a colleague of mine went to a bookstore to buy a pretty…

demo gif of nickang's remote sprint planing side project Getting to this point took over a month A bit over a month ago I got very excited…

This week I crossed the 100 day streak of meditating daily! My 100 day streak on the Calm app I go into details of my journey in this…

This was a book that I originally thought was written by the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Turns out, it was written by someone who…

Reading, creating one film everyday during a vacation, and writing. What do these things have in common? Not much, but one thing that would…

Today I experienced something I haven’t experienced ever before: I spoke to two people I know only from twitter. We are on a journey to…

Photo by Halacious A personal knowledge management system is a powerful idea, quite possibly one of my most important personal discoveries…

Once in a while an idea comes along that feels right. I’ve learned to be biased towards acting on such ideas when they appear, and today I’m…

My wife recently gave me an elaborate facial procedure to follow daily. She devised a note that consisted of one list for the morning and…

The perfectly round and red patties are vegan “meat” patties, sitting next to two real meat patties on our friends’ grill in Berlin. Hi, I…

Imagine someone created an Instagram profile called @crotchmeat. In my mind, there’s no way such a profile won’t take off in follower count…

I’m learning a bit of meeting rituals lately, and today I learned one that I know I will use a lot in the future. “What is the most valuable…

The documentary is very well made and provides someone like me with the important specifics of the history of black people’s struggles in…

At work recently I noticed one of my colleagues exhibiting less than ideal behaviour during his support shift and I wanted to give him…

I regularly get asked why I moved to Berlin. While I’d be glad to answer this question every time I get asked because because wow, I get to…

Gatsby is an open-source static site generator library written in JavaScript. Anyone who knows JS and a bit of Node.js and React.js will be…

Marketing feels dirty. When a model poses with a perfect smile, just so happening to be holding a product in her hand… that thought makes me…

I like feedback. No, let me make that clearer: I love feedback. When I receive it, I’m presented with an opportunity to grow. When I give it…

Technical understanding helps to solve problems, sometimes without involving any code at all.

A pandemic brings the global economy to its knees when you had just moved to a new city in a new continent, ready to explore? That’s bad…

By changing the label I use to refer to this website from "blog" to "digital garden", I am hoping to change the things I produce and publish here.

Inspired by a book and an article, I decided to write!

This article isn’t my own, but I was so moved by this story shared by Derek Sivers in his interview with Jordan Paris that I felt like I…

I recently went on a hunt for a suitable text expander software and in this post I share how I arrived at a perfect free tool. As a primer…

Source: wunderlist.com This week I realised that Wunderlist is shutting down and folding into Microsoft To do. It came as a surprise to me…

This is a group of videos that are part of a bigger series of video walkthroughs. Read Experienced Developer does FreeCodeCamp’s Web…

Hey! I have something exciting to share with you. I recently started to record myself doing the (free) exercises on freecodecamp.org. The…

Photo by Brett Jordan Someone asked me this at a Q&A recently and my answer was this: Don’t think too much about the difference between you…

I was asked this question recently by a student from a coding bootcamp and I thought it might be useful to document my answer down for my…

I’ve been teaching people how to code for several iterations now, and one of the things I used to struggle with was to convey why it is…

Setting up Terminal to access GitHub when there is 2FA setup on is more convoluted than I expected, so here’s a reference. The first time…

One way to make the data in Google Sheets downloadable is to publish to the web - but is it reliable for sensitive business use cases? I…

Photo by Bret Kavanaugh This post is my basic attempt to write down the way I’ve been thinking about human memory and how I’ve approached…

What is the difference between text and code? Clarifying this concept should help you demystify what code is once and for all. Is code…

REPL stands for read-evaluate-print-loop and it is basically a program that is an active session running a programming language and awaiting…

Real software engineers don’t reinvent libraries that already exist, they build something better on top of them. It is 2020 and I don’t…

If you have ever wondered what it is like to be a software developer, like what a week in the life looks like, this post is for you. I will…

Hello world! It’s that time of the year again to plan to make dreams happen. I’ve summarised my learnings for 2019 already so in this post…

If there is a skill in this world that is perfect for learning by iterating, it is programming. Iterating means to make an initial attempt…

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash When you’re not sure about what a term like “technical skills” entail, you might relegate it to being…

Walking in our new neighbourhood in Mitte, Berlin The value of writing daily This is the first year in my life where I’ve consistently kept…

My Astroahaus Freewrite fresh out of the box Hello, you. I want to tell you about the Freewrite, a device that I hold very close to my heart…

Photo by freddie marriage I love reading. It wasn’t always like that, but in 2019, I’ve started reading much more than I used to. This year…

Earlier this year in February, I published my last post on Instagram and left the platform. I left because I was feeling what every magazine…

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash I’m looking for a word that describes this exact feeling because it was how I felt yesterday from around…

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash I had two habits going. This was supposed to be a third habit. I would work on a new side project every…

So, I just wanted to write about what just happened on my notebook. I had discovered a new way of writing that helped clarify my mind even…

Photo by NordWood Themes I have a love-hate relationship with technology, specifically with computers being the de facto tool for writing. I…

Photo by Thought Catalog I want to admit something. Half the time, I don’t really know what I want to say. Sometimes, it’s because I’m…

Photo by Djim Loic Having been born and raised in Singapore, it took me close to 30 years to realise there was such a thing as Daylight…

Photo by Erol Ahmed As a company grows, even if the resignation rate remains constant, the absolute number of employees who leave the…

Photo by Tom Ezzatkhah I was back today at where all interestingness in my career began - the General Assembly campus in Singapore. It…

Photo by Robert Anasch As someone who understands and can write computer programs, I frequently ask, should I buy or build this thing…

We grow older and earn luxuries with our steadily increasing income. Instead of shrinking into comforts and doing less and less with each…

Just by the Bixby Creek Bridge along the Pacific Ocean, two hours drive south of San Francisco Living on the 25th floor of a tall mixed…

I’m tired and confused and feeling a little depressed. The day didn’t start out like this. I was chirpy this morning having done a workout…

It’s that kind of a day again. My eyes have been drained of moisture from staying open for the greater half of a day at work and now I’m…

Photo by SpaceX I recently heard an analogy of a pilot who, before takeoff, turned the nose of his plane one degree to the left. At the…

Graphic by Team17 Overcooked is a game designed for the PS4 that was love at first sight (yes, pre-play) for me and my wife. On first sight…

Photo by Smartly.io Today an article that I wrote was published on the Smartly.io blog. It’s a piece titled “Trust, Alignment and Action…

I recently spent three weeks in Helsinki as a sort of mini-rotation within Smartly.io. While I was there, I worked a lot more closely with…

I have Finnish colleagues, and they never run in the office. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them go any faster than a leisurely walking…

In a bid to understand what I’ve been thinking about and have done for the year, I’m taking stock of the posts I’ve published this year…

Here’s a thought without much bearings on life but is interesting nonetheless - is a massage considered wasted on you if you fall asleep…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7XUzCu7gg What better way to explore the differences between a blog vs vlog than on a blog about a vlog…

At a company party recently a friend (hello Emma!) asked me how I keep things interesting with my wife after marriage. “How do you not get…

Simple is easier to understand. Simple is easier to remember. Dogs are simple. Simple things are always more beautiful. Simple is harder to…

Every time I visit the dentist I seem to learn something new. This time, I learned that you’re supposed to floss before you brush! Who would…

Marketing is one of the key drivers of consumerism. It has been since humans first had things to sell to one another, beginning with simple…

Any useful piece of software is bound to have bugs. A corner case wasn’t thought of. Some user has found creative ways to use your tool that…

I’ve just spent 12 hours straight coding at work. Combined with the last couple of weeks of coding, sometimes late into the evening, I’m…

YouTube video link Here’s a fantastic animated film about habits that was recently recommended in my YouTube feed. This got me thinking…

ECMAScript 2015 (or ES6 as it’s more popularly known) is now mainstream and supported in all major browsers. With that, destructuring…

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have in recent years become quite the sales holiday. Marketers for retail brands drum up interest one to two…

Someone in Smartly.io recently shared with the company this article on how an outdoor equipment brand, Backcountry, managed to give such…

Just two or three years ago, I tried rock climbing for the first time. It was fun, but I couldn’t get too high, otherwise, my legs would…

First sale for ang veil yú Eleven days after launching our online wedding veil shop, we’ve made our first sale. What a wonderful day! The…

“When was the last time you listened to the seat belt announcement on an airplane? We ignore it because we’ve been trained to ignore it…

My friends are buying a pair for me (with my money) and I can’t wait for my AirPods to arrive. It’s not because I’m addicted to gadgets…

Marketing is a really big domain of expertise. Just ask Seth Godin - he’s been studying and practising it his entire career, and he’s still…

At some point in your programming career, you will come to a fork in the road to choose between code readability or efficiency. Which do you…

What is the real reason a user is unwilling to use a feature of your product? Let’s say you’re trying to help an existing enterprise…

If you’re the developer of an app that needs to pull large files from other servers, during testing or development, you may have wanted to…

A Google Slides deck can be used as a simple wireframing tool for a planned app. If your intent is to encapsulate what the app can do, a…

In the office today, one of my colleagues was using LinkedIn ads and found a glitch. Somehow, his teammate in the marketing team based in…

Not us. But I’m digging the vibes! I received an interesting message from a friend who recently saw my update on social media about my new…

Yesterday my wife and I launched our first business together. It’s so new at this point that our revenue is still, well, zero. But in the…

https://vimeo.com/300023705 Today, my wife and I launched Singapore’s first bridal veil boutique. It has been a beautiful day of many firsts…

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for my wife and I as we launch our first business together as co-founders. Just one and a half months ago…

A very cool tool that I discovered today from google searching is JSON Diff. It does exactly what you expect it to. Paste two JSON files…

When people are confused, I have seen some choose to not ask a clarifying question. Most of the time, that aversion comes out of fear of…

I’ve often asked this question to myself and I’ve never really gotten a satisfactory answer. “I don’t know, I’m kinda both,” would be my…

Each of us workout for a different reason. For me, it’s become less about vanity and more about actual physical strength. Sometimes…

If you’ve lived in Singapore before, you’d know that most places have restrictions on pets. Shopping malls and most restaurants don’t allow…

You’re the one I’ve been looking for. After years of trying to beat Evernote into the shape I want, I have failed. And look, now I’m falling…

Recently I was back in the military for training. This time it was in Australia and a handful of us conscripted soldiers coincidentally had…

We do so much just to keep up, why not reduce our needs so we free ourselves from having to do so much? It’s definitely possible to strip…

And so it begins, another thrusting into the unique social hierarchy of the military. It makes me uncomfortable to don the uniform every…

As I read, my wife sat beside me on our blue couch tapping at her phone. A quick glance confirms that she’s typing the text for another…

Setting up Liquid for server-side rendering for an app and for some reason, a simple arithmetic operation is incorrectly yielding the value…

YouTube recommended me this video from Gymshark today and I found myself immediately connecting with what it stood for. https://www.youtube…

When I got my new job recently at Smartly.io, I was given a choice of a MacBook Pro with a 13-inch or 15-inch screen. I chose the bigger…

Google released a product called Google Blog Compass (link broken as Google decommissioned the service; removed) that is supposed to help…

Not my colleagues, but this scene is totally normal in Smartly.io I just wanted to tell the world how cool I think that is. Why would people…

Here’s my version of the three second rule applied to purchases: if something puts a stupid little grin on your face for three seconds or…

Our company recently introduced a hiring referral program as a pilot. This development sprung out of needs from a company entering its…

I’m frustrated, which is usually a good state to be in to write. Nothing flows like anger out of the body. This time though, something is…

Without thinking about it too much, you wouldn’t realise how sinister they are. I’d just come out of one of the longest meditation sessions…

One thing I remember Jamie Oliver once said was that you can tell what kind of people are behind the food once you eat it. No well-ordered…

It is weird that I want to be there and not here, even though I know there is so much here I have yet to experience. There: San Francisco at…

This picture is so weird! Photo by Neko Tai on Unsplash I just realised this: I really want to meet as many weird happy people as possible…

I was wrong. I think I jumped to conclusions a little too quickly about the Gutenberg editor. You can use it while still retaining the charm…

Photo by Aidan Hancock on Unsplash I’m used to writing my posts in Markdown, that lightest touch to add formatting to text in the publishing…

Matt D’Avela is a filmmaker and rising YouTuber who has managed to build a community of people who are or aspire to be minimalists…

In the morning making my way along the Singapore River to get to the gym I’ve been practising meditation on and off for something like three…

Parts Unknown: Cologne, Germany One of my favourite documentaries is Parts Unknown hosted by Anthony Bourdain. It is gritty, personal, and…

You’ve probably heard of Sim Lim Square but have you heard of Sim Lim Tower? They are buildings across the street from each other but stock…

More or less how I feel right now It’s been an interesting month of being vegetarian for the first time. I was compelled by ethics but…

The bowl that changed my perspective I’ve always been sceptical of the magnitude of change that an individual’s action can bring. Four years…

I have a little news to share. For the first time in this blog’s history, we have SSL (secure sockets layer)! Why is this interesting? Well…

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash A CEO, who is also a founder, gathers all new employees in a room during onboarding week and tells them…

A glimpse into our Singapore office! I initially intended to write one post summarising the top three things that I think are done well at…

My most unbelievable first week of work at Futurio 2018 in Haikkoo, Finland I’m currently working in an organisation that makes me feel…

I met a small surprise challenge on my flight home from Helsinki today. I hadn’t asked in advance for vegetarian food. It didn’t even occur…

Photo by Alex Mercado on Unsplash It’s official. Well, sort of. I’m going vegetarian! For a month, for now. To know how I went from…

Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash I’ll admit, I have always been a little sceptical when it came to spending money to advertise on Facebook…

If you’ve read a few posts on this blog, you’d know that most of them revolve around the topics of technology (technical and non-technical…

Students of NUS BES in the lobby of Dao Diamond Hotel I was in Bohol, Philippines as part of an overseas field trip at NUS involving 5…

Touching down at Mactan-Cebu International Airport This has been an interesting year for me so far. I started the year having just left my…

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash Over the last 6 months or so, I’ve been using a mobile app called HabitBull to measure my success at…

We can sit and watch people do amazing things, get inspired, and then do nothing. Or we can also do some amazing things. Doing anything…

I’ve been consuming a bit more news lately, and quite a bit of that through the Google News app. To be clear, I’m really just going from “no…

There’s a special breed of workers called the weekend warriors. They don’t necessarily hate their jobs, although many do. Some might just be…

Drew this when I was waiting for Mei to get ready for dinner with my family

After hesitating a bit, I decided to pay for my first book by a local artist I was in one of the most hipster (and gentrified) towns in…

What I look like in my room watching YouTube videos of other artists drawing on their iPads I just invested SGD $640 to buy an iPad 201…

“Do more,” says Casey Neistat. “Be the hardest worker in the room,” says Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. “Wake up before everybody else and work…

In an earlier post, I lamented the fact that some companies have an interview process that requires very specific preparation. My main gripe…

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh0ieM_nTpU I’m currently in the midst of searching for a new job, and one of the biggest goals I wished to…

Photo by 胡 卓亨 on Unsplash When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Tao Te Ching This is a deeply important saying that I believe…

Sangria, the fruity Spanish cocktail that is served in practically any cafe and restaurant in Barcelona, is absolutely divine. I’ve never…

Today is a glorious day. Not in some grand way though. Today is the day Casey Neistat uploaded a video on his channel (recently rebranded as…

For me, holding a book elicits a different feeling compared to holding a phone. The former feels productive, quiet, and tactile; the latter…

One thing led to another, as usual. Elon Musk shared a video on Instagram and I followed his prompt to watch the full version of the video…

Having been meditating daily for a while now, I’ve finally made up my mind about the role of background music in meditation. For me, I…

Today’s thoughts were formed while riding in the Singaporean traffic jam Among the many interviews I’m doing at the moment, none has been…

One of my few struggles today was to reason with myself to buy (or not) this typewriter for $120 What’s daily life if not a series of…

No matter how many posts covering how many topics in however much depth that I write and publish here, they will only ever add up to an…

We root for the underdog at first. Until the underdog becomes the new incumbent. Then we start scrutinising the incumbent in fear, worrying…

Photo by Blake Connally on Unsplash I have something to admit. The first time we were introduced to Node.js at programming bootcamp, I only…

Here’s a quick and dirty illustration that helps me visualise the difference between (available only in ES6) and . for (var i = 0; i < 5; i…

I heard about teachyourselfcs.com some months earlier, but I’d forgotten all about it. At that time, I haven’t had serious thoughts about…

Photo by Beatriz Pérez Moya on Unsplash If you’re just starting to learn to program, it can take a while to wrap your head around data…

Photo by Tikkho Maciel on Unsplash It’s been a while, but I finally managed to find a good time and the willpower to drag my ass out for a…

I believe some of the best moments in life happen serendipitously, when you just happen in the right place at the right time, with a…

In web development class today, many of our students faced a problem adding event listeners to an array of HTML elements (ok, DOM nodes to…

Markdown is amazing. It’s like HTML but much, much more readable and less work. But some things can get confusing, especially if there is…

That hand is gonna cramp up any moment now… Have you ever had cramped hands from thumb typing on your smartphone? I’m experiencing it right…

Photo by Paul Gilmore. New to programming and heard about the usefulness of git and GitHub? In this article, I’ll give you the only quick…

Using socket.io for your web socket needs? Me too. It’s a real enabler of a technology, ain’t it? But even tools good can sometimes have…

We just got back from a trip to San Francisco. Aside from strolling along the bay by the Golden Gate Bridge, we visited our friends living…

I’ve been in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 10 days and have learned a lot about the city and the East Bay and South Bay cities…

The old typeface for this blog - bye Inconsolata! It’s official, I’m sick of the Inconsolata font! The font you’re seeing now is good old…

Today was interesting. Despite being a tourist, I got in touch with the right people and put together an Intro to Coding workshop (it was…

I was in a Lyft ride in San Francisco city this afternoon when the news of the school shooting in Florida broke over the radio. Spawned from…

Somewhere in Oakland along Market Street. I’m currently in the San Francisco Bay Area for a short vacation. It’s been a fun trip so far and…

Photo by Norbert Levajsics on Unsplash For over a year, I used ESLint at work without knowing. I didn’t have to understand what package…

Original photo credit: Pete Wright You might have read someone else’s JavaScript code recently and came across something like this: let name…

Image by Igor Ovsyannykov I first came across the term “API” before I knew how to code. It was thrown around by the developers during a…

So, I’m currently teaching a front-end web development course at General Assembly, and one of the best things about being an instructor is…

Photo by Natalia Figueredo on Unsplash I’m very sleepy as I write this because I stayed up past midnight last night trying to add That One…

Integrating Diigo and Evernote is possible with a service like IFTTT but nothing beats product ownership I wish Diigo was a product by…

Be steady and well-ordered in your life, so that you can be fierce and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert What a beautiful quote, right…

Photo by Levi XU on Unsplash One of the biggest benefits I’ve personally gotten from meditating daily is the invaluable ability to recognise…

Carousell is an online marketplace that is huge in Southeast Asia, grown proudly from Singapore. (What a great name, right? Carousel with a…

Why the heck is Rick’s skin gray? Rick and Morty is such a endearingly weird show that I feel that I need to address it in a blog post. It’s…

Legend has it that there’s a right way to put on your manly clothes in prep for a ball (or in my case, a friend’s wedding lunch). Wearing…

Photo by Fabrizio Magoni on Unsplash I’ve been watching a little too much Chef’s Table recently, so I thought of doing a simplified and…

That’s the no bullshit name of a chapter in Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday that I’d read today. It’s one of the best chapters in what I…

Programming is a precision sport. I’ve personally encountered—and many times have been the reason for—situations where an imprecise word is…

One very common scenario for wanting to clone a class instance is inside a function. Why there’s a need to clone objects/arrays inside…

Screenshot of Matt Mullenweg’s blog There are many awesome blogs scattered across the vast internet, but none feels more organic than Matt…

What my desk looks like on a good day from working at home I’d recently taken up watching Chef’s Table during work breaks. I love it for its…

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash Before Becoming Technical™, I had about a hundred ideas of what I would build. Something to automate this…

Food delivery services are awesome. They provide unbridled convenience since they’re even faster than fast food when you cut out the travel…

Photo by Lotte Löhr on Unsplash For the first time yesterday, my long time friend Kegan joined my wife and I on a quick grocery run. Since…

A still from Uber’s “Let’s unlock cities” campaign Ads before a movie screening in the cinema are like the tasty dessert before a meal. With…

Watch the Minimalism documentary. I watched it on Netflix. My notes Some words and phrases that frame the issue of excess in modern day…

I recently had the privilege of introducing frontend testing to our code base at work. With 5 engineers working on different parts of the…

Photo by Buzz Andersen on Unsplash I’m beginning to adopt an engineer’s mentality of wanting to build things because it’s fun and I’d…

Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash From what I can tell so far, software engineers who didn’t graduate from a Computer Science (CS) degree…

I was struggling quite a lot today with an algorithm challenge on LeetCode called ”Generate Parentheses”. It was hard enough that after…

The Moleskine notebook I used every step of the way in 2017 I’m not doing this for the sake of tradition or anything like that. Instead, I’d…

Singapore laksa from a nearby makeshift food court near work All the success in the world means nothing if you don’t have good health to…

Photo by Les Anderson Hello, friend. If you’re here for an actual guide on what to do when your bike runs out of fuel, skip ahead to the…

Photo by Kevin on Unsplash As a programmer, you probably get a little carried away once in a while. You know, getting engrossed in the…

Yesterday I asked myself whether it was necessary to implement a stack abstract data type in JavaScript. The answer turned out to be “no…

This is the stupidly simple question I asked myself today as I was trying to familiarise myself with data structures. Is there ever a need…

Photo by Sime Basioli on Unsplash The goal of bubble sort is to sort an array in ascending or descending order according to a sortable…

This post is inspired by a recent bug fix at work related to jQuery’s method. I noticed multiple redundant calls to our server endpoint…

Photo by Ben Neale on Unsplash Ever heard someone tell you that your code is not “DRY”? What’s the deal with that? Are they saying that your…

Photo by Nathan Fertig on Unsplash If you already know what a binary search tree is for and how it works, read on to learn about their main…

Not my arm. Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash What is a binary search tree? How is it related to binary search? Is it an algorithm or a data…

Photo by Pablo Garcia Saldaña on Unsplash If you’re a software engineer, you’ve probably heard about binary search before. And if you don’t…

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash In this post, you’ll learn how to implement a linked list in JavaScript. This is the second…

Photo by Simon Abrams on Unsplash A linked list is one of many commonly used data structures. The first thing to know about linked lists is…

Photo by Lysander Yuen on Unsplash Big O notation has attained superstar status among the other concepts of math because of programmers like…

Medium is becoming a major source of online advice for me and I’m getting worried It’s 8:00am in the morning on a weekday and I’m sitting in…

It’s almost the end of the year 2017. I’m 27 and I still don’t get poetry. I’m inspired to log this here after trying to understand the poem…

Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash I dislike email HTML. There, I openly said it! I really had to get that out of my system before I go…

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash Sass is a CSS pre-processor. Even though I’ve been using Sass in many projects, I realised recently at…

Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash The air conditioner in my office is really loud but I just realised this: I hadn’t noticed it at…

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash Enough is enough. We live in 2017 in a world where tech exists in every nook and cranny of our daily…

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash Now that we’re coming close to the end of 2017, I’ve been thinking about my career and careers in…

Photo by William Bout on Unsplash What’s this weird sounding thing called Git? Is it Git or just git? What does it do, who uses it, and is…

Tinker Hatfield and one of the sneakers he designed (I’d be surprised if that assumption is wrong) I recently re-started to organise what my…

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash It’s important to say the obvious. Because obvious is not always obvious to everyone. Because obvious is…

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash “Crap, I think there’s a bug. This isn’t supposed to work like that!” Have you heard a software engineer…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLUwBRQGuoU&feature=youtu.be Just for fun today, I decided to record my typing test (from this website). May…

Photo by Nolan Issac on Unsplash I turn to coffee when I’m tired and still have some time left in the day to work. But when I brew or order…

Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash Let’s talk about a complete misconception today. I’ll put it out there… you don’t need to type fast to be a…

Photo by Dan Edwards on Unsplash Welcome to the second part of How to start using the command line. You can read part 1 here if you haven’t…

Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash Let’s say you have a routine task (it doesn’t have to be a programming task, but that’s what your mind…

Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network I recently had a few conversations with people who are not software engineers and a surprising number…

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash Some days at work as a programmer, I feel like a doctor trying to resuscitate software. Drawing from a…

Photo by elizabeth lies on Unsplash Today’s topic is a very specific problem I’d been wanting to solve but never really got around to…

At Beach Road in Singapore We recently went to Bali again. It was our 6th trip there this time. I guess you could say we’re a little…

Photo by Thanh Tran on Unsplash Just getting started with becoming a programmer and want to start using the command line? This post is just…

Photo by Antonio Grosz on Unsplash Here’s a rhetorical question: Have you ever wondered how does the internet work? How is it possible that…

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash Users don’t care how your product works. As long as it works. A user will accept one or two bugs in your…

Photo by Paweł Durczok on Unsplash First of all, what is a Command Line Interface? In my own words, a command line interface (CLI) is the…

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash Hello internet! This is the second part of How to get started with programming. If you haven’t read part…

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash I’ve only been a professional software engineer for about a year, but one of the questions I’m…

Sunset at Kuta beach in Bali The build-up was a full two days. And then I went and did it. I’ve never thought about getting any piercings…

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash Let’s begin this segment from the very top and ask, what is programming? I think a good starting point…

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash I’m really excited about setting myself a new challenge, one that I think will play nice with both the…

Photo by Gili Benita on Unsplash Today I heard a hilarious way of benchmarking one’s noob-ness in the tech industry as a developer. It was a…

Source: https://ngrok.com/product Suppose you’re part of the engineering team of a tech company whose product is involves giving users…

Photo by Mark Eder on Unsplash Bone dry. That’s today for me. I’ve sat in front of my blank screen for close to an hour and I have nothing…

Photo by Solal Ohayon on Unsplash I’ve been going for Muay Thai classes recently. Training has been interesting so far. They switch up the…

Photo by Hope House Press on Unsplash I’ve been running into Unicode and ASCII and related encoding/decoding issues recently at work. We had…

Between reading an article and watching a video, I almost always choose video if there were stable and free Wi-Fi and if I had my device…

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Right now I’m just sitting here searching my mind for thoughts, including those I’ve had throughout the…

Going for a light-hearted post today. I want to share with you the ridiculously simple name card that I used to get my first developer job…

Photo by Mikito Tateisi on Unsplash Making progress is hard. Inertia can kill a project before it even begins. But when we finally muster…

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash A couple of weeks ago, I shared a wonderful quote with my friend Kai over a bathroom conversation…

I had an interesting conversation with my friend Rama today. We talked about many things, from management to meditation, creating music to…

I think of mindfulness as a mana bar. You know, like that blue bar that diminishes when you cast a spell in video games? When I meditate in…

Photo by Leo Rivas-Micoud on Unsplash At work recently, our CTO noticed that our main repository’s branch had over 80 less commits than…

Photo by NeONBRAND Use case: You want to switch to a different branch on the same project (say from to ), but you have uncommitted changes…

In this short post, I’ll demystify the process to squash git commits from the command line. This process is simple if you’re using a remote…

The idea of blogging has changed. In the past when people first started to use Blogger to publicly share stories about their lives, blogs…

I love using repl.it, and I use it so often I can go up to a some else’s laptop and type the fully formed URL in the browser: https://repl…

Find your Macbook slow after upgrading to macOS Sierra? I recently did too. As a developer, it was painfully obvious that something needed…

Was faced with an optimisation problem today at work. Our product analyses large datasets every day and as our number of user grew over the…

San Francisco, we have a problem. Photo by Caspar Rubin on Unsplash I love the idea of machine learning. Concepts like cost functions and…

Hello imaginary Uber product manager, if I may, I have a feature requests as a frequent user of your product. This is related to safety…

When the first few Aesop stores started appearing in Singapore, being a generally skeptical consumer, I thought they were another gimmicky…

One of the things I find myself enjoying more about travelling is the accommodation. No it is not about being able to afford to live in…

Startups and established companies should not think for a moment that their users can be easily fooled. Users in 2017 are usually astute…

I was in Perth, Australia this weekend with Mei and we drove around in a small blue Mitsubishi Mirage hatchback. It had a manual…

At work recently we had to figure a way to redirect a user to another webpage when she clicks on a URL. This is obviously a trivial task for…

Let’s talk about naming variables. Today I saw something like this in the code base at work. No I’m not sharing the actual code but it’s a…

I’m a firm believer that you can only effectively sell if you know the thing you’re selling. Case in point: I have missed opportunities to…

To add a suffix to an image url string in Python, you’ll need to use the (regular expression) module. We can use regex to identify the file…

When you have a lot to think about, problems unresolved, what do you tend to do? Tonight, like so many nights of surrender, I take the path…

Warning, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts about Wonder Woman, so spoilers ahead. Please skip this post if you haven’t watched the DC…

“I can’t. Ok I should say, I shouldn’t. For some stupid reason, as a male person it is not appropriate to shade yourself under an umbrella…

In Singapore, as it probably is in other countries, we have more than one company fighting for ride-sharing dominance. We have Uber, which…

Ever since I became an adult, there’s always been someone around me noticeably lost in their life. I’ve been there before and expect a good…

By you I mean I. I’m ready to admit, I don’t know everything. It’s an admission that doesn’t cause me to blush but makes me feel stronger…

First of all let me admit, I wasn’t there to witness what it was like to build web/mobile app features before 2016, since I only became a…

I’m inspired by how driven some people can be. It’s not everyday that you get genuinely impressed by someone’s energy, particularly not…

Since joining the Metisa team at Altitude Labs, I’ve had to learn a new programming language: Python. Before this I’d only known JavaScript…

Everyone takes photos with their family, but only those who have their priorities straightened pin them up in their cubicles at work. And…

Between 2016 and 2017, I went from knowing nothing about code to becoming a software engineer at Metisa, a startup that is building an end…

Hey there. If you’re searching for an honest review of some of the programming courses currently available in Singapore, you’ve come to the…

What platform are you using to get noticed in tech? For a noticeably growing group of people, it’s YouTube. Some names are already starting…

Yesterday I got my friend, Yihui, to come in to give a talk to the current WDI batch at General Assembly. He was gracious with his time and…

Bit by bit, we’re inching closer to our deathbeds. While this isn’t meant to bring anyone down, I am trying to elicit an emotional response…

One of my favourite Singaporean foods is the classic eggs and toast breakfast. Two soft-boiled egg heated to just slightly runny, served…

As an adult, I often hang out with friends after work for drinks or a munch. As an adult, I’ve also noticed that it takes time for other…

Today marks the end of the first project for WDI7, the 7th web development course to run at General Assembly Singapore, and boy is my mind…

Earlier today we had a guest speaker come in to speak to us (the Web Development Immersive class) broadly about computer science, algorithms…

You find yourself suddenly with the heavy responsibility of coming up with a marketing strategy for a tech company with a product you…

As crowded as the internet is in 2017, anything well thought out and clearly written will be read, as long as it is discoverable. Every…

Painters in training spend most of their time understanding the theory of light, pigmentation, dilution and so on, and put these to practice…

Programming bootcamps are everywhere now. Some are up to the mark while others make up for it with good marketing. Whichever the choice you…

Merry Christmas! It’s really just Christmas eve as I’m writing this. I’m at a coffee shop, the traditional Singaporean kind from the 1970s…

Sal’s 4 tips for writing blog posts as a developer It’s Christmas Eve and I find myself itching to read and learn more about programming, so…

Humans have mental models of everything. How is that birthday party going to be like? How does it feel to be entering a new stage in life…

When I entered the web development industry-complex (is it okay to refer to it as such?) in August this year, the first thing I noticed was…

One of the key principles of good programming is DRY - Don’t Repeat Yourself! Here’s one way to reduce repetition with event listeners by…

Every time when Mei and I come home from a trip to the bank or a nice movie date, we’d come home searching for that warm spot on our marble…

Show up. That’s the most important thing. Or so says a bunch of successful people^. Why is it important to show up every day to create…

I’m starting a new (short) chapter in my life as a teaching assistant at General Assembly Singapore. Actually, yesterday was my first day…

This is 2016 - our phones receive and send data packets by the megabytes per second, simultaneously. Sometimes I imagine seeing lines of…

Why get involved when you know it’s not necessary? Ask yourself, why do I need my blog to rank high on Google? If I asked myself that…

After doing the work—to follow up on a lead or apply for a job—it easily feels like we deserve an answer. That we have cast the net and now…

Let’s say you’re given an array of numbers, and you’re required to find the smallest number in the array. How would you do it? Though I didn…

It’s 9:50pm on an otherwise wonderful Sunday night, and two officers from Certis Cisco, under the appointment of URA stood outside my door…

Coding feels like a chore today. It took me a while to even entertain the idea that I might be experiencing coding fatigue. To be honest…

Time is almost up! One last week and we’ll be official graduates from General Assembly’s web development course. But before that, one final…

Our class recently had the good luck of having a really good developer come speak to us about web development. Chardy Wang is the CTO of…

Grave Matters, a game by our web development instructor and two friends Our instructor at General Assembly is also a game developer, and he…

Worms (the game) is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about drones and air-drops. “Special delivery!” and some cargo drops…

That’s Bruno Mars Today, for the third time since we moved in to our new apartment a year ago, we snagged a great deal. We found three pots…

This is the order we learned about web development: HTML —> CSS —> JavaScript —> jQuery —> Node.js/Express server —> Postgres SQL database…

God, please make me who my dog thinks I am! Eckhart Tolle, The Art of Presence (audio) Over this week I’ve been listening to the recording…

Our culture is obsessed with success, and while we’re at it, it must come quick. The sooner we get richer than anyone imagined we would ever…

Is it enough to kinda know something? Like coding, for example? More specifically, I’m wondering whether it’s ever a cause for concern to…

Laptop work is inherently unhealthy (yup that’s Ruby on Rails) Recently I’ve been finding myself lethargic quite a lot and I think it’s even…

The world’s first 3 plants under my care I used to fake a frown to look like I was thinking. You know, so I’d look just like an adult…

It’s the end of the week, a project week, a project week-eeeennnnd! (Wong Fu Productions reference.) Today is Friday, 23rd September 201…

Setting up a node.js server is not the same as writing HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It’s much more complicated than that, and honestly, I think…

Week 6 of web development school is coming up! That means we’re going to build stuff - yay! I’m particularly excited about this coming week…

Our instructor, Jeremiah, illustrating the relationship between the client, server, and database in a web project Once you’re over a certain…

Coding is just a means to an end. Unless you’re using programming languages as a medium of art or doing computer science research, there is…

I had an interesting conversation with a programmer yesterday about programming. Halfway through our conversation about how much complexity…

As a user, it used to be hard for a website to impress me. I see certain features here and others there, and after a while, I get a good…

Going to lunch Here’s a real example from class today. My code is significantly longer than my friend’s. To be honest, I also feel like his…

Chinatown Ever wondered why Mozilla Developer Network’s documentation often include a , like Array.prototype.push()? I did, for a long time…

I’ve broken the promise of writing every day for a few days in a row now, and I’m starting to feel a bit sick of blaming myself for it. So I…

Week three is officially over. Everyone in class has completed their first big coding project and presented it to everyone else. Mine is…

Have you seen a document full of code recently? Your answer is either “Yeah, too many” or “Nope, can’t remember the last time I saw a coder…

As JavaScript code is being executed by the browser, the value stored in variables change dynamically. When a user clicks on a button on a…

Riding down the streets of Singapore has been great - I get to cut through static traffic and arrive earlier than car owners. But that comes…

Tools conserve cognitive resources for the actual tasks! Image: Robson Morgan I now recall that about a year ago, I was introduced to the…

Projects that I’m used to working on are entrenched in structures (as in structure versus agency) that inevitably hold me back from full…

To juxtapose elements in a scene against others is to pick on contrasts. In Duxton where I’m having programming classes, the contrast is…

The label ‘digital nomad’ exists because people whose job was to write programmes have become so fluid in the workplace that they can work…

I think every aspiring programmer gets extremely excited when they create their first game. No, just me? Huh… It’s my first weekend at…

Week 1 at GA Singapore is trying to get the very basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript Whenever learning something new, start with the basics. Web…

In class at General Assembly Singapore With the advent of affordable personal computers came a defeatist belief that “we can never beat the…

Image: Mike Wilson A cool advantage of being in the habit of writing everyday is that you will become inclined to ask, every single day…

A bug. That’s what we call the bits of our code that don’t work as we, the programmer, intend. When a programme is “buggy” it means it works…

What our classroom looks like from the inside. Michelangelo said this of marble: inside every block lies a sculpture to be discovered. All…

I’m going to keep this post short because I think tonight’s homework is going to take over 3 more hours… Yesterday was day 1 of our web…

Before today I was trained as an environmental and social scientist. Knowledge of the complex issues that are ongoing around us and around…

The newly rich spend their money lavishing themselves and those they know with items, but also with protection. Money buys protection. From…

It’s ok to be busy at work, but being overly engrossed is almost never worth it. Perhaps the only exception is when the deadline is the next…

We all compare. What some of us may not realise is how much we tend to compare ourselves with things and people around us. That’s a pretty…

Recently we realised the need to protect ourselves with a surveillance camera in case of one of our Airbnb guests decides to be an idiot and…

A lot of problems are bubbling as I try to find a way to make money while deriving meaning out of the job. If I saw them as separate…

For the first time in my life I’m yearning to go home early from a vacation. The only time this has happened was when I was 12 and stuck in…

My 4 year old niece doesn’t even know to position her mouth above the bowl she’s eating from, and the fact that I needed to be reminded of…

Sometimes I feel like engineers engineer because they know that humans cannot be trusted to take charge of what’s inside their mind and body…

A scene from Parts Unknown, Scotland episode I was on the plane yesterday to Hong Kong when I watched Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Less Known…

The transitional space between pre-regulation and regulation might be the best time to get in on something. Drones. Airbnb. Paddle boarding…

I had just left another hardware meet up (called Hackware) and I’m emanating inspiration now, so I thought I’d write it all down while…

A blink of an eye and it’s been almost a month since I posted anything here. Nope, I haven’t got an epiphany to write about some big idea. I…

I’m growing up. Maturing. Definitely considered an adult now at 26. As I grow a little older each day, I can feel myself grasping life a…

Image: Eddie Klaus I’ve been thinking lately about talking about work. It’s something young people fresh out of college naturally pick up…

Stranded in the rain earlier today, I had time to kill. (That phrase should be illegal.) At first I listened to an episode of the Tim…

The main thing that occupied my mind today is the difference between hurrying and being energetic. I realised that even though I’ve been…

Few things are consistent about me. I like change much more than most people are comfortable with, and I see that as a strength, not…

Bisons sharing the road with us 9:10pm, 22 April 2016 in Stage Coach Inn, West Yellowstone, Montana Hooold on, hold on to me. Because I’m a…

8:32am, 20 April 2016 in Travel Inn, South Lake Tahoe, California We left Oakhurst for good early this morning. To be honest, I’m glad to be…

Took a picture of this roadside wildflower with stunning colours Finally found the time to write my travelogue. I’m behind by three days now…

(Guacamole) man of the hour at Qdoba Mexican restaurant in Boston For today’s travelogue post I’m going to try something different from what…

It’s Tuesday now, which means I missed two days of writing and posting, so I’m going to make up for it now in subsections. We spent Sunday…

It’s four days into our trip to the US and I think we’ve settled into a groove. We’d get up unhurried, wash and prepare for the day at a…

Every train has a thunderous arrival in NYC A train in New York City’s subway first sputters before growing into a series of clanging as the…

Few flowers have bloomed even though it’s Spring time, but these ones are doing well Oh, what a day it’s been in Manhattan. Actually, it’s…

And finally, the day is over. Phew, we’re beat! I’m going to keep this brief so I can go to sleep soon, seeing that it’s just going to get…

A day before our big trip! I’m feeling a mixture of excitement and worry. We’ll be flying out from Singapore’s Changi Airport tomorrow. 6pm…

For me this is as close as it gets to holding onto time It’s 4:55pm. I woke up at 5am today to send Mei to her freelance gig nearby and went…

Brownie, my toy poodle, might just be Buddha. I seriously think that to myself about once a week. I’d be sitting in bed with my laptop…

2 Travellers, 2 Backpacks, 1 Month in the US! We finally began packing our backpacks for our coming month in the US. Six days before the…

It was 8:30pm when I entered into the Youtube search bar: “George Foreman vs Muhammad Ali”. Earlier in the day I was driving around…

From Quora: Should you renovate the whole house at once or little by little? Let’s start by clarifying your situation. Do you have the…

I’m trying to understand something… I get very excited when I read certain books. Recently it’s been Seth Godin’s series of books on…

You’re not going to forget this “Wow, the past 5 years went by too fast…” “How did that happen?” “Where did all those years go?” Asked such…

A year later I’m still getting used to having to do my own… everything. My wife and I moved out of our parents’ in October 2014 so it’s been…

With a solemn heart… It was another day with an important meeting that might help push my startup forward. At the lobby I took a deep breath…

“Welcome, Flo, to Everest. Well, sort of. This is Everest Base Camp”, I said in Zee. “Beeeeeei plisssh grrraw breep?”, sputtered Flo. Let me…

Key points made: Things can go really wrong (a lot of the time) if you let passion guide you in finding a good job to do great work example…

Oh how naive I’ve been. About two years ago I declared that I needed a typewriter so I can write more. I told my wife (then girlfriend) that…

There are at least two kinds of home automation: Internet of Things Mecha-tronic Things 1. IOT! IOT! IOT! Can you hear the crowd of geeks…

I’m currently reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You. If you haven’t heard of this book before, I have to ask: Did you flinch…

Microground…? I was sure I hated this brand of coffee. It had a splashy entrance with free samples at the local movie theatres and ads on…

The eagle is landing We’re going to the US for a month in April! Amidst our slow preparation for the trip—finding friends to take care of…