TeochewThunder: Year Twelve (Part 2/2)

In terms of views, I wouldn't say 2026 was a worse year for this blog. If anything, it performed better than 2025 and on par with 2024, so far anyway.

And as I noted earlier, there were quite a few posts from His Teochewness that showed open contempt for... well, shit, whoever happened to be pissing me off at the time. And because some of these were from way back years ago and I'd had time to properly ruminate over why I got pissed off, the language is arguably a lot less intense but heaps more damaging than if I'd gone in red hot. Because, then, I wasn't wildly throwing haymakers; I was landing kidney shots and throat jabs.

High Performers

These were the ones that got the most attention. And honestly, I'm heartened that they weren't even the most controversial ones. They mostly centered around my home exploration of Singapore. Of course, my Black Mirror Film Reviews have always been disproportionately popular.

Lots of attention.

- A Software Developer's Vacation in... Singapore
- Film Review: Black Mirror Series Seven
- Film Review: Black Mirror Series Seven, Redux
- A Software Developer's Vacation In Singapore: Coast-to-Coast Trail Edition

The one sole standout was Finding Your Purpose Professionally, which involved me dunking on both older and younger workers alike, because they annoy me in equal measure, for different reasons.

Surprise standouts

These are next in line to be mentioned because they got a pretty big audience as well. Some of the attention was expected because I courted it with every F-bomb and verbal strike. (Making the contact tracing effort mandatory, redux and Hiring remote foreigners? Slow your roll, hotshot and The Case against Hunger, Enthusiasm and Other Useless Buzzwords).

This one, Ten Reasons To Keep Treating Job Interviews As Target Practice, in particular, was inflammatory, but I also like to think it was helpful.

The same can't be said of Musk's Macrohard is as silly as it sounds. I didn't intend for it to be helpful. Elon Musk said something stupid (something staggeringly foolish that offended me as a programmer) and I called him out on it. 

Then there were technical pieces like Five Image File Formats For The Web and More ways to declare colors in CSS! and I really couldn't tell you why they turned out as well as the foul-mouthed ones. And then there's Named Versus Positional Notation in Functions and Methods. One of the popular ones. I mean, it's such riveting stuff, right?

Good amounts of attention.

Working has different goals from working out and JavaScript's non-existent relationship to Java and Bolt CEO's dangerous logic for axing his entire HR Team were more philosophical than rude. And yet... boom!

The Case of the Awkward Tech Interviewee was another war story which I didn't think was all that compelling, but I guess reality proved me wrong, there.

Duds

Obviously there were times I was disappointed with the turnout because I really felt my effort deserved more. This could have been down to any number of reasons, chief of which is that my writing just isn't as compelling as I gave it credit for.

For example, Seriously, why try to cook Sam Altman? is a post I thought was great. It had one of my favorite targets in my crosshairs and in it I savaged both Altman and his would-be assassin. No bites. Or just fewer than I imagined I'd get.

Very little attention.

Artificial Intelligence and Its Effect on Entry-level Hiring was another one I put a fair bit of heart into. Perhaps it needs more time to gestate, having just been released last month.

Five Funny Tech CEO Nicknames was another one I thought would be a sure hit. No such luck. It seems a guy can't even rely on making fun of CEOs any more, to get eyeballs.

Onward to Year 13!

This really wasn't a bad blogging year at all. If next year is anywhere as good, I'd consider myself blessed.

I make all these critiques of my blogposts while understanding that I'm really nobody in the big picture and attention isn't something I'm entitled to, even if by some miracle I could handle it.

XII-ding expectations,
T___T

TeochewThunder: Year Twelve (Part 1/2)

It's time for my annual blogging break! Let's look at what 2026 brought us - lots of tech news (mostly about Artificial Intelligence), quite a bit of jQuery and even a bit of NodeJS.

Happy 12th blogiversary!

Twelve years to the day I got off my ass and started this blog. Seems unbelievable. In that time, I've bought my own place, gotten married, quit smoking and learned maybe five different languages - not all of them programming ones.

Those familiar with the TeochewThunder tradition will know that October is the month I take a break and gear up for the end of the year.

Tone

I'll begin the year-end retrospective by conceding that I've been making rather inflammatory posts recently. Specifically towards small biz owners.

The small business owner and I have a complicated relationship. On one hand, I realize that it isn't easy to run a business, and it's far more pleasurable to be working for a small outfit than a huge one with tons of stifling rules. On the other hand, I hate it when small potatoes give themselves airs... and some of these are tiny spuds acting like they're the shit. When in all likelihood, they're just shit.

Tiny spuds.

Suffice to say, if even one of these fellas reads my stuff and ends up going "fuck this guy", I'd pat myself on the back. Really, what are they gonna do? I'm practically retired.

That said, I've managed to keep the profanity somewhat minimal. Not as minimal as last year, obviously, but I'm proud of myself for the effort. That's not to say I can't be provocative and offensive if I don't swear, because I absolutely fucking can. I just don't want to end up pigeonholing myself.

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence...

Not that anyone asked, but all this content has continued to be written by me. None of this was written by AI. That distinction is important. On Social Media, I've noticed a whole slew of long-winded posts that scream "LLM Vomit".

Imperfect as my writing is, it's not that. Sure, I do consult an LLM on content. I run my writing through Claude and ChatGPT and even Gemini. AI checks for typos and unverifiable facts, and cautions me on possible inflammatory speech, and tells me that some people may get their precious feelings hurt. In the final case, I may even smile, and ramp up the offensiveness.

You're offended? I'll
show you offended.

All of that is a far cry from letting an LLM generate text for me while I tweak the wording. You may get a lot of crap from me, but you'll never get that kind of crap.

I don't want to give you that stuff, but the fact of the matter is, I couldn't even if I wanted to. Even after feeding the LLMs my writing and asking them to reproduce it, I've yet to find one that even comes close. That's largely because LLMs try to be as correct and inoffensive as possible. And as longtime readers know, these aren't always top on my list of priorities.

Morever, using an LLM for output generation is just superfluous. I'm not in a position where I need those productivity gains. This blog is not for profit; if I can't even be authentic in this situation, that's just sad.

I don't feel quite the same way about AI image generation, though. Because none of you have ever been under any kind of impression that I took those stock photos myself, and generating images gives me what I want without having to hunt endlessly for it. The only difference is that some photographers won't be receiving my paltry monetary thanks, but it isn't as if they would starve otherwise.

Web Tutorials

As mentioned earlier, there was quite a bit of jQuery this year. That's for good reason.

There's increasingly little value in using vanilla JavaScript to demonstrate stuff. I have to jump through too many hoops and explain too much. And in this day and age, using getElementById() feels positively primitive. Shit, in this day and age, jQuery isn't particularly cutting edge either.

Getting primitive.

jQuery gets me there faster with less fuss, and sometimes that matters more. After years of using vanilla JavaScript, it's what I cut my teeth on and I'll always have a soft spot for it, but at some point pragmatism needs to win out.

There's also some NodeJS and a bit of VueJS. I'm not an ideologue where code is concerned; whatever works best in the given context gets the nod. But above all, I don't want to be a one-trick pony. That's almost tantamount to career suicide in my industry. Not that I have a long fruitful career to look forward to at the age of 49, but it's the principle of the thing.

Other content

The dry technical content (outside of Web Tutorials) is still present in the blog, but it's been drying up a bit. Not to say I don't still enjoy writing those even though nobody seems to enjoy reading them, if the views are any indication, but I realize that AI could do a far better job than me of explaining that stuff.

Still, features like Spot The Bug are still going fairly consistently even though I seem to be doing JavaScript almost exclusively (yes, different frameworks and libraries, but still JavaScript).

One thing I've been doing more of, is lifestyle stuff. Things I've been doing outside of work. It used to be I'd do this a couple times a year by vacationing out of the country, but lately I've found that Singapore can be just as interesting without having to break out my trusty old passport.

Wheels, baby, wheels!

And part of it is just me discovering, after having quit smoking, that I like being allowed in non-smoking areas like parks and nature reserves. Huh. Go figure. Funny the directions life takes us. As it is, I'm discovering a whole new side of Singapore on bicycle. And somehow, part of me just can't stop comparing all this shit to software architecture. It could be that being a software dev has allowed me to appreciate the art of building all this, within the constraints of a tiny island.

Back to Artificial Intelligence

The reason why I've been writing so much about AI is because, love it or hate it, it's hard to simply dismiss it. It's permeating code, Social Media, employment and technology - four subjects this blog tackles regularly.

I can't seem to get by a day on YouTube without listening to some take on AI. How LLMs are good, how they're bad, how the AI Bubble is about to burst...

Code bubble.

Also, I have opinions. Shocking, right?

As a software developer, I also have to deal with colleagues and bosses who range from wildly enthusiastic, to cautiously optimistic, to staunchly negative, and none of these positions is inherently wrong, which makes things a lot more interesting than your typical flat earth debate. The situation changes by the day, and that's genuinely intriguing.

For example, right now there's an ongoing Doomsday discussion as to whether AI will bring about the end of humankind by the end of the decade. By the time I publish my two cents on this, it will be November and my perspective will be stale. But whatevs, it's not like the Earth has stopped spinning on its axis waiting for me to release my opinion to the world, eh?

Next

Hits and misses of Year 12.