new blog post, "a normie software engineer in the age of code generation" bobaekang.com/blog/a-normi... putting down what i've been thinking lately. ai may write code, but i'm still accountable for my work. plus, we have the tools and techniques to handle mass code generation by LLM.

happy new year to all! may 2026 be the year of better software!

published a new blog post, "agent engineering as ui engineering" bobaekang.com/blog/agent-e... > In many ways, engineering for agents is engineering for UI, and at the heart of it lies putting the right constraints in the right places for users--humans and LLMs alike

i got emotional reading this. kpop demon hunters is one of the highlights of my 2025. warhcing the movie and its success was a surprise gift to me as first gen korean american. i'll never forget how special this year was. time.com/7338690/brea...

ah this is just so beautiful sinelaw.github.io/fresh/

wrote a two part blog series on server short simple posts, nothing really original, mostly conceptual, the usual for my writing. but i just had to get them out of my brain

do both uber and lyft really play video ads on the ride tracking screen? i work in ads too but that looks real bad if true. not everyone has unlimited data, and they eat through your data, making it expensive to monitor your ride and stay safe

just finished watching my first company town hall livestream. damn im so hyped to be part of this. ENTERTAIN THE WORLD!!!

life update: tudum!

JS framework hype is dead

what to do for a week before starting a new job? 1. netflix & chill 2. review fundamentals 3. build/learn something new

all good things come to an end, and as of today, so has my time at spotify. i've been very lucky to meet & learn from many wonderful people. i'll def miss my old team! a brief note reflecting on the journey & lessons learned, plus a hint at what’s next: bobaekang.com/blog/leaving...

is working for faang considered prestigious in 2025?

the fact that my blog post is mentioned in this kind of convo... feels amazing😭

i need to re-read the little prince

i've been lazy/busy lately... i do need to write more on bobaekang.com

today i deleted 6k loc at work

i thought 'use server'/'use client' were about new react. turns out, they're meant to offer a new model for UI programming. in fact, react was always meant to offer a new model for UI programming--composing components. now react tells us we can compose computers.

oh no... i need to focus...

is 2025 the year of linux desktop? youtu.be/pVI_smLgTY0?...

love to see dan pumping out these articles. keep 'em coming! btw, can't wrap my head around the "refresh" button--how would they work?

just listened to @syntax.fm episode on RSC, always fun to see how different people find different ways to grok it. for me, i think i got the mental model right when i wrote "RSC is react server + component" blog post.. and this is even after reading both blog posts by @danabra.mov on RSC

i did not expect to get an answer to my question like this

standalone api server but endpoints respond with RSC data yes? no?

what a journey! there is nothing "new" here, but it's always a treat to read a piece by a great storyteller.

single round trip on user action ÷ streaming + suspense

it's telling that so many people are using 4o to generate ghibli-style images. the latest ai excels at imitating, and that's plenty useful. but it can't create something original that touches our hearts. at least not yet.

you may not like it but this is what peak vibe coding looks like

how do i get good at java? like really good? i write it all day every day at work anyways might as well get really really good at it.

my solution on scaling backend at work led to 3.5x the throughput and .25x the latency. not quite a 10x win like tsc port to go, but i'm v happy about this!

common @golang.org w

a new blog post "signals aren't monads and that's ok" is now live: bobaekang.com/blog/signals... critically evaluating a claim that signals are "reactive monads" by digging into both signals and monads. it's not the best intro to either, but i learned a lot so that's ok!

this hit me hard. i dreamed of working at 18f when i was a government employee some years ago. it's a shame. www.nextgov.com/people/2025/...

ah my react solid htmx pt2 didnt make it this time. maybe a next blog post will! there's just so much going on recently. read the newsletter first, and my blog post if you still got some time! bobaekang.com/blog/react-s...

i worked on a toy project this weekend, a simple chrome extension to chat with the webpage. the goal was to get my feet wet with building something with llm. thanks to ai sdk and openrouter, i learned more about css and chrome extension than anything llm related.

solid 1: every read is potentially reactive solid 2: every read is potentially reactive and async

a year later, i have a follow-up to my top blog post, "React, Solid, htmx": "Regardless of where their paths lead in the future, I’m confident that @react.dev, @solidjs.com, and htmx are pushing the web forward, each in their own way." bobaekang.com/blog/react-s...

"use framework"

evidence for impedance mismatch between react's own vision for itself and how people use it in real world. provided rationale for recommending frameworks is totally fair. it's just that react is used in more ways than what it expects.

great series making compelling points with concrete examples! i wrote on the same topic a while ago ("two ways to the two reacts") but im so bad at providing examples in code. brenley def does it better.

oh no they're here too

got a new blog post, "I barely write React code at work" bobaekang.com/blog/i-barel... >Most of the new code I’ve written is in Java, and IntelliJ has become my primary IDE. [...] How did this happen?

react 19 is out, solid 2 is close, and htmx isn't changing. great time for react, solid, htmx part 2. but first i need to turn back on my js/web/frontend brain cells because they got killed by the one-two punch of nonstop java for weeks followed by the end of year vacation..

came back from a social media break to say happy new year to everyone. what a crazy year 2024 has been! and 2025 will be even crazier. cheers!!

finally!

korea finished martial law before i could get my pr merged

damn writing business logic in java backend is so boring i have nothing to post here..

java is made for job security

sometimes my job is to start building based on requirements only to find out something's not quite right about them requirements and communicate it to others so i can finally throw away my work and start over