It Starts with Curiosity
I'm the kind of person who makes a plan whenever something sparks my curiosity.
Whether it's hunting down a new restaurant or exploring a neighborhood I've never been to — I'm drawn to discovering new things. I usually start by looking for places with high ratings and strong reviews. When I find a gem, I post it on Instagram and revisit it whenever the craving hits.
That same curiosity carries over into my work. When a new technology comes out, I check it out — especially if it's from a reputable institution or already being adopted by the industry. If it seems useful, I work it into my workflow and document the entire process.
Curiosity is in my nature, but I also don't want to forget what worked. Writing is how I hold on to what I learn.
Platform Migration: From Tistory to GitHub
For about four years, I used a Korean blogging platform called Tistory. As a developer, it eventually started to feel inefficient for writing. That's when I started looking for alternatives.
During the search, I realized a critical problem: I'd been building all my content entirely within the platform's ecosystem. Years of writing, locked into a single platform.
I realized I needed a fundamentally different approach. And here's the solution I came up with:
- GitHub — Version control and content ownership
- Notion — Image hosting (linked as external URLs)
- Platform-specific tokens — For deploying to publishing sites
This setup gave me the portability and control I was missing.
Trying Other Platforms
During the transition, I experimented with a few options:
- Blogger — Felt clunky and outdated
- Medium — Poor markdown support, and the API token system was essentially deprecated
After weighing the trade-offs, keeping my content on GitHub and deploying to dev.to made the most sense.
Platform dependency creates unnecessary friction, and I'd rather own my content than rent space for it.
Why I Write
In a world where AI can answer nearly any question instantly, why bother writing at all?
Because writing forces me to think. I could rely on AI for quick answers — and I do, regularly. AI is remarkably powerful, and it's only going to get better.
But I've realized that without the deliberate process of organizing my thoughts and putting them into words, far less of what I learn actually sticks.
Writing isn't just about producing content. It's a form of active learning. When I write about a concept, I'm forced to confront what I truly understand versus what I merely skimmed over. The gaps become obvious.
The act of explaining something — even to an imaginary reader — deepens my comprehension in a way that passively consuming information never could.
So I write to remember. I write to understand. And I write to build something that compounds over time.
Why English?
The answer is straightforward, but the reasoning goes deeper than it might seem.
I work as a developer, and at times, as a project-oriented problem solver. As AI capabilities continue to advance, I believe human-to-human communication will become not less important, but more so.
Here's why. As AI improves, the cost and effort of implementation continue to drop. Development itself is getting faster, and learning curves are shortening thanks to both personal growth and AI assistance. In my own experience, I spend far less time debugging or digging through official documentation than I used to.
But a different kind of work is becoming more prominent: deciding what to build and why — through discussion, negotiation, and alignment between people. These conversations happen in natural language, not in code. They require nuance, cultural awareness, and the ability to articulate ideas clearly.
Of course, engineers who deeply understand a project's technical constraints will always be essential. But there is already no shortage of capable developers — and their number will only continue to grow.
What distinguishes one developer from another is increasingly about communication, judgment, and the ability to bridge gaps between teams, stakeholders, and cultures.
At its core, my role is to translate someone's intent and vision into working software. To do that well, I want as little friction as possible between myself and the people whose ideas I'm helping bring to life.
No matter how advanced AI becomes, we still work with people.
That's why, although I'm Korean and currently living and working in Japan, I make a deliberate effort to write and communicate in English. It's about expanding my reach and reducing barriers. English is the lingua franca of the tech world, and investing in it is a long-term strategic decision.
The Long Game
The tech industry will continue evolving at a relentless pace. Frameworks will rise and fall. Tools will come and go. But the ability to learn, to communicate clearly, and to think critically — those are durable skills.
What truly matters is building the habit of persistence.
Keep learning. Keep writing. Keep pushing into unfamiliar territory.
Some days motivation runs low. That's normal. I've found that even watching a good talk or a motivational video can reignite the spark. The key isn't to feel inspired every single day — it's to show up consistently, even when you don't.
Writing is how I show up. And that's why it still matters.
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