Disecting my portfolio

2 min read
#engineering
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I spent five years building my personal site. Went through countless iterations and lost motivations midway. But in the end, it was all worthwhile. Learnt from many mistakes and finally, I feel like I’ve hit the sweet spot between my ideal design aesthetic and engineering standards.

So, why did it take so long?

I won’t go into great details, but I’d like to share a few reflections — things I’ve learned along the way, and what I would do differently if I were starting over.

  1. Mental health - Always prioritise your well-being. Work gets busy, deadlines pile up, but none of it matters if you're running on empty.
  2. Feedback - Don’t wait for perfect product — share your work early. A bit of feedback can save weeks of second-guessing.
  3. Design paralysis - Stop chasing the “perfect” design. Start with good enough, improve as you go.
  4. Shiny tech syndrome - Use tools that serve your goal — not just because they’re new. Simplicity scales better.
  5. Celebrate the journey - Every version of your project reflects growth. The process is just as meaningful as the result.

Tech stack

With that out of the way, here's the list tech & tools I used to build my site:

  1. nextjs
  2. typescript
  3. turborepo
  4. tailwindcss
  5. shadcn
  6. content-collections
  7. pnpm
  8. mdx
  9. figma

You can go plus ultra with tools, however, simplicity has its own beauty. The less you have, the less you need to maintain and scale.

Picture of the author