~/leohuynh.dev/takes.md

My takes

On building software, working with humans / AI, living my life, raising my son, and not repeating the same mistakes.

01

Work

  • Good taste make great products
  • Simple & familiar behaviors + consistent patterns = best experience.
  • Good UX/DX is product work, not a nice-to-have.
  • Care about your work email + git notifications, better manual check them regularly.
  • Bad leaders criticize (the worst ones do it publicly <- avoid working with them). Good leaders coach.
  • Be boring and consistent. It is the best way to ship.
  • Better prepare a solution for a problem that you want to raise.
02

Engineering

  • Care about the code you ship, just as much as the product you build.
  • Product/lib adoption > shipping code.
  • let > const
  • Do not anticipate site's scrolling behavior, let it happen naturally.
  • Let AI draft, code, and review; but don't let it decide what good looks like.
  • Bad spec will ship bad code faster.
  • Commit + open PRs early and often
  • I don't use useMemo & useCallback, I was never truly understand them, and I don't care that much about re-rendering.
03

Communication

  • Never judge/talk about people's appearance, background, or accent. They come to work.
  • Talk slowly and lower your voice. You will have more time to think, and people will listen more.
  • I raise my voice only when I play football, game, or when I need to be solid with my son.
04

Life

  • "My" life would suck w/o coffee
  • Happy wife, happy life.
  • My son just need my time, attention, and love.
  • Parenting is hard for good parents.
  • Prioritize your sleep, it determines your productivity, mood, and health.
  • Prioritize your wife as well, she will treat you better than anyone else.

Subject to change. That's the point.