One purpose of this blog is to make sure I’m keeping my hands on the keyboard so I don’t drift too far from coding, even though I’ve transitioned into a management role. Truthfully, it’s been nearly three years since I’ve coded with any real focus, and, well, I’ve forgotten a lot.
Writing this post also pushes me out of my comfort zone by doing something I find challenging: documenting my technical skillset and confronting where I fall short. I’ve never been great at not being great at something, and software development often feels like “going against the grain” for me. It doesn’t help that I work with some incredibly talented developers—comparing my skills to theirs feels like dropping a stone in my stomach.
That said, this blog is about growth. And I know I’ll never expand my boundaries if I don’t push against them.
Blog 1.0
The blog you’re reading now is actually my second full build and deploy. When I first spun up a Hugo project, I struggled to get my theme-of-choice to work. Instead of dwelling in that discomfort (noticing a trend?), I decided to build and style everything myself.
The result? Functional but awful. I had a homepage, an About page, post pages, and an article list, but it all looked a little bit like my MySpace circa 2004. Once I deployed it, I immediately knew it wasn’t my best work.
A UX designer, I am not.
So, I scrapped it all, read up on Hugo themes, and voilà—here we are. This version feels much more polished and streamlined, and I’m excited to keep iterating on it.
Friction points and Takeaways
There were definitely some bumps along the way. Here are the biggest challenges and lessons learned:
- Remembering CSS. I don’t miss fiddling with selectors and flexbox, but nothing beats the rush of seeing something finally look like the idea in your head after 20 minutes of tinkering in the browser inspector.
- Reading technical documentation. I struggle with reading through dense technical docs—it sometimes feels like decoding another language. Hugo’s structure took me longer to understand than I’d care to admit, but persistence paid off. Now, I know where to put things to make them work as intended.
- Deployment. This blog is currently deployed via GitHub Pages, which I’m familiar with. However, I wanted to use GCP to align with the tooling my team works with. My first attempt failed (likely a DNS configuration issue), so I pivoted to get the blog up and running. I’ll circle back to GCP deployment soon.
- ChatGPT Wow. If this had existed when I was learning to code, I wonder how it would have shaped my career. It helped me clear several hurdles, but I’m also grappling with whether it’s becoming a crutch. Generative AI is just another tool—like a calculator—but I can’t help but wonder what I might miss by relying on it too much.
Status Update
Here’s where things stand after this iteration:
| To Do 📋 | Completed ✅ | Revisit ♻️ |
|---|---|---|
| Add GA 4 tracking | Deploy Blog | GCP deployment |
| Make SEO improvements | First post | Hugo documentation |
| Investigate metadata and update | Add newsletter sign up | |
| Add Disqus for comments | ||
| Promote on LinkedIn |
This journey has already been a learning experience, and I’m looking forward to iterating further.
Have you tackled a similar project? Struggled with CSS selectors or documentation that felt like another language? I’d love to hear about your experiences! Drop your thoughts, tips, or questions in the comments below—I’m excited to learn from you, too.
Stay tuned as I keep figuring it out!