Tech Radar

Fourteen years of moving from PHP through JavaScript to a full TypeScript stack, and lately into AI-augmented engineering. This is the view from the inside — which tools I lean on, which I’m trialing, and which belong to an earlier chapter.

The Radar

Quadrants group technologies by category. Rings, from the inside out — Core, Adopt, Trial, Retired — show how central each one is to my current work.

LANGUAGESFRAMEWORKSTOOLSPLATFORMSCOREADOPTTRIALRETIREDTypeScriptJavaScriptSQLGoRustPHPNestJSReactNext.jsNode.jsTailwind CSSTanStackTypeORMMotionLaravelLumenAngularjQueryCodeIgniterZendPostgreSQLAWSVercelDockerOpenSearchGitHub ActionsGCP Pub/SubStripeWordPressMySQLClaude CodeCursorPlaywrightSentryVitestBunCodexFigmaGemini APIOpenAI APIGitHub CopilotAiderJestCircleCI

Core

Daily drivers. Default choice — deeply invested.

Adopt

In regular use. Confident and committed.

Trial

Experimenting. Selective use, still forming opinions.

Retired

Moved on from. Part of the history, not the present.

Eras

2012 – 2019

The PHP years

Started on Zend and jQuery at ClearTag and Layout. Moved through Laravel, CodeIgniter, and eventually Laravel microservices with Angular 6 at IdeaToLife. MySQL was the default database; WordPress came in briefly with Postlight.

2019 – 2021

Shift to JavaScript and React

Postlight pulled me into the React ecosystem full-time — Jest, CircleCI, headless WordPress, and my first real Node.js services. TypeScript started replacing JavaScript on new projects.

2021 – 2024

Full-stack TypeScript at Buena

Rebuilt a no-code Airtable product into a NestJS + Next.js platform running on AWS and Vercel. Introduced Postgres, TypeORM, Stripe, Sentry, and GCP Pub/Sub. 130+ tables, 1,000+ units collecting rent monthly.

2022 – now

AI-augmented engineering

Joined the GitHub Copilot technical preview in June 2022, then ran Aider for a while, before settling on Claude Code and Cursor as daily drivers. Go entered the stack for a new search service on OpenSearch. Built AI agents for accounting (90% accuracy) and ticket categorization (95% accuracy). Cut 2-week projects down to 3–4 days.

All Technologies

Languages

Programming languages I’ve shipped production code in.

Core

Adopt

Trial

Retired

Frameworks

Application frameworks and libraries anchoring my stack.

Core

Adopt

Trial

Retired

Platforms

Databases, clouds, and runtime environments I build on.

Core

Adopt

Retired

Tools

Editors, testing, observability, and AI copilots in daily rotation.

Core

Adopt

Retired