If you have been following me for a long time, you already know I have been holding off my Portfolio review for a good several months.
Before you ask, yes, I will show what my portfolio has to offer. First, I want to write about something we all may have been thinking at some point, or even recently.
Everyone needs a developer portfolio. It's one of the big ways to start out in the tech market because it shows your work and experience to recruiters in a friendly UI format. Some may say it's a great alternative to review a candidates work (Source: Trust me bro).
However, in the age of AI, it seems that it's almost impossible to create a portfolio that stands out. Why is that the case?
AI Can do...anything?
We all have tried using AI at some point and even still use AI in our daily lives. Whether how much you have used it, you know the capabilities of AI.
AI is trained so well that it can potentially one-shot a website portfolio. Even better, if the person decides, it can add features and other stuff to make the website looks like it was built in months (but it was build in minutes). We even got to the point where Claude was able to merge two games into one in a matter of a few days!
It's crazy isn't it. AI development is off the charts in the last year or so.
Seeing AI has been on the rise lately, I thought to myself: "Why consider building a portfolio if everyone can vibe code their way into making their perfect portfolio?"
To be honest, it's a valid question. The market has been difficult because everyone is using AI to their advantage to stand out from the market. I have seen a ton of Portfolio and Resumes that have been assist with AI. As a result, the bar as not been higher.
However, I still believe having a portfolio still matters, even in this age where it seems impossible. Here's my reasoning.
1. AI Portfolios may look different, but they are the same.
What do I mean by this? I am talking about "style".
If you try to vibe code a portfolio, you can tell that the portfolio is vibe coded. Sure, it's not the EXACT replica compare to 100 portfolios out there, but you can easily tell by seeing some UI features that are defaulted if you vaguely prompt it.
A small, and bad example is this:
I have reviewed a lot of portfolios that has this. Sure this may be a coincidence, but I want you to try to vibe code a sample website portfolio. Most of the time, they will add this feature.
This matters because if you think about it, a lot of portfolios out there are simply the same, even though it may not look like it. You have to have a good "attention to detail" to see this for sure. However, at this point, coming from a person who has review candidates before, it tends to be really repetitive.
2. "New Mask, Same Task"
Yes, I took this straight up from RDJ. Though the whole point is that even though he plays a different character, he is still RDJ.
What does this mean in this context? Just because you have a good looking portfolio, it does not mean your work reflects that. You can create many different portfolios under your name. At the end of the day, it's still you that needs to improve and not the portfolio.
For example, you may have a very good looking portfolio, but if I were to investigate further into your GitHub, I may see the following things:
- You just joined as of this year.
- You claimed you did Open-Source, but there is no PR that reflects that.
- Your Portfolio has good UI, your project doesn't.
I can list a lot of things, but the main point is that if you have a good portfolio with a good list of projects you have done, you better hope that your projects and work reflects on how you built this portfolio. This is ESPECIALLY true if you tried to become a front-end developer. If your UI is good, you better hope your projects reflects that.
It's something to keep in mind when building your portfolio.
Those are the two main things. Though you may still be asking "How do I make my portfolio stand out"?
Here are some key things that you can do (and yes, I am now showing my portfolio lol).
1. Start with a basic portfolio template, then use AI to add on to it.
For my case, I have used an existing portfolio from "brittanychiang.com and meikopoulos.com". From there, I grab existing features using AI and put them together into a portfolio I am proud of:
Instead of building it from scratch, I encourage you to find a portfolio that already exist and build it on top of it. This allows the portfolio to be unique and that reflects you. In this case, I added a feature where the "Skills" section reveals Pokemon in each Skill Card, though I am not sharing that. But can you find the Easter egg that does that?
2. Usability and Accessibility!
This is the most OVERLOOK aspect of making a portfolio. Even though you can make your portfolio looks nice, it's most likely that it's not usable.
For example, it can be very laggy on low-end devices, not responsive on mobile, not following best practices, etc. There are a lot of things that is overlooked because we focus on building the best looking portfolio where we should be focusing on making our website portfolio be optimized.
I would recommend spending time using AI to optimize your portfolio. In other words: "Boil the lake to make the portfolio, but boil the ocean for website optimization and accessibility".
For mine, I spend countless prompts where I tell the AI to make sure my portfolio is less "laggy" and being able to run on mobile.
This will allow to make a much cleaner portfolio and being able to be used by many people such as people who have disabilities, devices that are not powerful, etc.
3. Simplicity beats complexity.
A lot of portfolios we have seen tends to be very complex where there are a lot of animations and such.
However, the more you think about it, the more you realized that you can stand out easily.
I have seen a lot of portfolios that are REALLY complex and as a lot of animations, but what others fail to realized is that: You are doing what everyone else is doing.
At the end of the day, you are not standing out, even if you THINK that you are. If I see a portfolio that is heavily designed using AI, I can guarantee that I can find the exact same person who can one-up that.
The best advice is making it simple. Yes, it's boring and yes it's common. But..that's the whole point.
I rarely see any portfolio that is simply built. Usually the ones that are simple tends to stand out because it shows a lot of information really quickly.
This is huge because recruiters tends to review portfolios and resumes in seconds. They will not have time to look over your awesome UI and animation you have Vibe Coded. The UI should be the icing on the cake, not the whole cake. The most important parts is your work and experience.
Then why design your portfolio? It makes it much easier for people to navigate your work and experience than reading your resume line-by-line of course lol. The point is not spending time making the UI look nice, but spending more time on making sure if they are able to access your work and experience within a small amount of clicks.
4. Networking (AKA show your portfolio)
This is the biggest thing. SHOW YOUR PORTFOLIO.
What's the point of making a portfolio if no one is going to see it. You can share it to your family, your LinkedIn connection, and even on DEV!
With that said, here is my portfolio. Give it a Review and let me know what you think!
Francis Tran
Francis Tran is a software engineering student and full-stack developer building modern web apps, open-source products, and AI-powered experiences.
francistrdev.github.io
Speaking of, if you have a portfolio that has been sitting around, feel free to share your portfolio in the comments. I would love to see your portfolio and review them!
That is all! Cya :D
Top comments (10)
I am simplify my portfolio/cv:
Creator of mordorjs and TifY also pipeline-operator fanatic.
Those legacy tech sooner or later outdated. Make some fun until singularity!
Thanks Peter! Will look into it further and will let you know on this thread! :)
Nice portfolio Francis! Great to see it live!
Thanks Julien!
Planning to work on mine soon and I’ll share it once I’m done! Also, loved your portfolio, Francis 😀
Thanks Hema :D
Looking forward to your Portfolio!
I checked it out! Its really good and that animation of balls when you scroll up is great. I'll have to understand that implementation, I don't know why but I tried it for several minutes😅.
One question though, what does portfolio actually include?, cause I'm a student and I have an internship experience which I always refrain from talking about in public for obvious reasons and I've got some good OSSs.
I agree with you on the "Simplicity beats complexity", that's why I generally showcase and build my professional work and profile over the LinkedIn. It's good to follow the KISS Principles in general 😀
Really cool portfolio! I especially liked the bouncing ball 😸 It gives the page a lot of personality.
I also agree with your point that even in the AI era, actually building something solid still matters a lot.
Especially deciding what to build and how to shape it, that still says a lot about the person behind the work. Really nice article!
Here’s my portfolio too 😹
nyaomaru-portfolio.vercel.app/
I tried to keep it as simple as possible, and there’s even a small game in it 😸
The phrase 'addresses the rising AI noise in hiring' hits right at the core bottleneck of tech recruitment today. When code execution is cheap, documentation and structural rationale become the only real moat. Anyone can tell a chatbot to compile a multi-column layout, but your website portfolio is where you prove you can manage complex systems, write semantically clean code, and actually reason through architecture bugs. Looking forward to reading your full review!