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My stack & tools

Tech stack

Frontend

Framework / libraries

I'm most comfortable with Angular and Vue, powered by TypeScript.

I started using Angular for work in 2018/2019 back when it was in version 6. Since then, I continued working on projects after projects using Angular until version 11.

2021 onwards, I mainly use Vue as part of work requirement. Having a bit of experience with Vue back in 2019 did help with my transition to Vue, plus the timing was just nice — Vue 3 was about to come, so I got to experience both Vue 2 and Vue 3.

Now that I'm currently on a career break and Angular recently had its renaissance, I took the opportunity to revisit Angular. My personal projects these days are built with either Angular or Vue, depending on the nature of the project. This blog for example, is built with Nuxt, a Vue framework.

State management

For Angular applications, our approaches to state management depended on the complexity itself. For enterprise applications, I have experienced managing states using NgRx and NGXS. For a much smaller applications, using services and rxjs are more than enough.

For Vue applications, I have experienced managing states using Pinia. Out of many state management libraries out there, this is the simplest one I have ever used. But at the same time difficult for me at first because I was so used to NgRx verbosity.

Styling

Working for small-sized businesses, to have a designer is considered as a luxury. So we relied a lot on UI component libraries or UI templates. Plus it helped us move faster. So far I have used Angular Material, PrimeNG, and Bootstrap at work. And I used Tailwind for the first time when the team I worked with had a designer.

I continue using Tailwind for my personal projects, but recently I got into a love-hate situation with Tailwind. So I decided to use only (S)CSS for styling, just to see what do I miss the most about Tailwind.

After months of searching my feelings, I'm now back to Tailwind. Reasons? I'll probably save it for another post.

Backend

  • Laravel
  • Spring Boot
  • NestJS

Database

  • MySQL

Hosting platform

  • Digital Ocean
  • Google Cloud Platform

Tools

PHPStorm

I've been spoiled by Jetbrains IDEs since day-one as a developer. I tried switching to VS Code but it didn't work for me. Now that I mainly use Laravel as the backend, I am currently on PHPStorm subscription.

Figma

I found my way to Figma back in 2020, where I initially used it to practice translating design to code. In 2021 I had the opportunity to work with a UX designer, where the team happened to also use Figma.

At my next job, I made use of Figma combined with UI/UX skills that I picked up as a developer to communicate ideas with the team and stakeholders.

As Figma became my second main tool next to PHPStorm, I discovered Friends of Figma KL, which opened doors to more design / UX communities.