Learnings from 2026 January 3-9

Gee-Wey Yue — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:45:55 +0000

After my previous post from October 2025 about Learning in Public, I achieved a number of milestones that I had not posted. Brief recap to catch up to the present:

participated in my first hackathon in San Francisco, building an edtech tool for homeless youth in California during Hack for Social Impact 2025
dug into some HTML tidbits I was unfamiliar with, such as fieldset and entities / character references
learned about the core logic of LLMs, thanks to renowned AI researcher Andrej Karpathy's free YouTube series called Neural Networks: Zero to Hero
shipped a frontend MVP for a stealth startup in the power tech space, helping them secure their first paying customer

This week, I had a few learnings:

Did you know a Promise is prioritized over setTimeout in JavaScript? It turns out the JavaScript event loop has two types of queues: macro task queue and micro task queue. Synchronous code executes first, then tasks in the micro task queue, followed at the end by tasks in the macro task queue.
I heard a software engineer speak about her focus on the "joy of experimentation," which is distinct from the results-driven development of "having to ship." I love the reminder to leave room for joy in spite of requirements and deadlines.
I started digging into how to better utilize Claude code and will begin implementing ideas from Sarah Deaton's post.

To close out, I realized how I might want to use this space as not only a place to share my learnings but also as a "professional diary" of sorts. I appreciate having this space where clout and engagement are not the priority. The act of me capturing reflections is valuable enough feedback to me. Happy 2025 and onward to a great 2026.

Learn in Public (thanks swyx)

Gee-Wey Yue — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:17:09 +0000

Lately, I have been dabbling across a number of topics, ping ponging back and forth across tech concepts, specific tools and platforms, and trends. From past experience, I realize that this approach is ineffective for me.

According to swyx's Big L notation for learning, I am learning at the scale of L(log N) Lossy Learner.

I want to make better use of the time and energy I apply toward learning, practicing, and doing. I want to shift up the curve.

So how am I going to approach it? Currently, I am at the Explorer gear.

Each week, I will microblog here about topics and challenges I've encountered.

If nothing else, this will be a record of my struggles and growth (failure is learning).

For anyone who is interested in joining, I encourage you to check out swyx's structured thoughts regarding #LearnInPublic: https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public

DEV Community: Gee-Wey Yue

Learnings from 2026 January 3-9

Learn in Public (thanks swyx)