Why Build a Personal Site From Scratch?

There are plenty of portfolio templates out there. Drag-and-drop builders, Notion pages exported as websites, single-page resumes hosted on GitHub Pages. They work fine, but they all feel the same.

I wanted something that reflected how I actually think about building software: typed data layers, component-driven architecture, and content I can version-control alongside code. So I built this site with Next.js 16, TypeScript, and MDX.

The Stack

Here is a quick look at what powers this site:

• Next.js 16 App Router for file-based routing and React Server Components
• MDX via next-mdx-remote for blog posts that mix Markdown with React
• Tailwind CSS v4 for styling without leaving the markup
• Framer Motion for scroll-triggered animations
• Shiki via rehype-pretty-code for syntax highlighting

A Sample: Data-Driven Projects

Every project on this site is defined in a single TypeScript file. Here is what one entry looks like:

# Not the actual site code, but here's a quick Python example
# to show off syntax highlighting in this blog.
 
def fibonacci(n: int) -> list[int]:
    """Generate the first n Fibonacci numbers."""
    sequence = []
    a, b = 0, 1
    for _ in range(n):
        sequence.append(a)
        a, b = b, a + b
    return sequence
 
print(fibonacci(10))
# [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]

What Is Next

This blog will be a place for me to write about:

• AI/ML research and side projects
• Lessons from competing in D1 golf and building startups simultaneously
• Technical deep-dives into tools and frameworks I use
• Reflections on the intersection of finance, technology, and competition

If you have made it this far, thanks for reading. More posts coming soon.