Hello world! This is my first-ever blog post. Cool, right?

Who's behind the keyboard?

That would be me, Szymon, a frontend software engineer. Recently, I have joined Microsoft to work on an internal monitoring & telemetry platform. Sounds familiar? Before that I was developing a large-scale SaaS observability (yep, monitoring) platform at Sumo Logic. It definitely seems like coding interactive dashboards and charts is my thing!

Lately, I've been having many thoughts and no place to share them. That's why I decided to build my personal website.

Interestingly, this isn't its first version. In fact, if you dig into commit history 😁, you will see I had a similar website some time ago. Life got busy, and I moved on, but the source code stayed on GitHub. I thought, why not give it another shot? So, armed with the lessons I've learned over the years, here we are again.

The old vs the new - Static Side Generation

I consider Static Site Generation a must for static sites which don't change much over time. It minimizes data transfer between the client and the server. It also paves the way for static hosting - a more cost-effective & faster way of hosting React apps than using Docker containers.

Old version of my website used Gatsby for SSG. Now it's all about Next.js. Why make the jump?

Well, Next.js is rapidly becoming the go-to React framework. With the release of Next.js 13 and its Server Side Components, it's now the talk of the town in the frontend space. I wanted to dive in, see its benefits first-hand, and perhaps refresh some of the features I might have overlooked.

That said, it's not just about the tech. While I've observed fairly similar build times and other key metrics with both, I must say - and this is purely subjective - the developer experience feels more streamlined on Next.js compared to Gatsby.

What can you expect?

I'll mostly post about the technology world. Expect deep dives into frontend topics, handy programming tips & tricks, and occasional articles on self-development. However, I'm not (currently 😁) aiming to be next The Pragmatic Engineer - my posts will be somewhat shorter!

Every so often, I'll also write about my passions. Right now, that's motorcycles & cars, sci-fi literature. But hey, these change!

How often?

I'm aiming for biweekly posts, but don't be surprised if something pops up sooner (or perhaps a bit later).

What's next?

I have plans for a few upcoming posts. I want to create a detailed write-up on coding a blog from scratch (part 0 - preparations, decisions, architecture; part 1 - actual implementation, tips & tricks; part 2 - transitioning to Server Side Components).

Apart from that, I recently did some job interviews and helped some friends prep & secure jobs. I have many insights on crafting resumes/CVs and preparing for interviews. I will certainly share these here.

Other places

I'll be cross-posting each piece on my dev.to blog. I'll also share updates on my LinkedIn with each new post. If you're into the old-school vibe, there's always the RSS feed to keep you in the loop.

To my Sumo friends

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all my colleagues at Sumo Logic. Working in such tech-savvy environment has been an incredible experience and learning opportunity. However, this would've been all nothing if not for all the amazing people at Sumo. Thanks! I'm confident our paths will cross again in future 😉.