Hello world

Every developer's first program prints "Hello, World." So it feels only right that my first blog post does the same — except this time I actually mean it.

I'm Kenneth. I'm a software developer based in Costa Rica, and I've been writing code for almost 18 years. It started in high school, of all places, when I built my first website in Adobe Dreamweaver and made little animations in Flash. I was hooked immediately. There was something addictive about typing something out and watching a machine actually do it.

That spark never really went away. Today I work as a software developer at Amazon, and my days look a little different than they did back in the Dreamweaver era. A lot of my time now goes into planning, designing, and architecting systems — defining specs, figuring out the shape of a problem before a single line gets written. And increasingly, I spend my time leading AI to build what needs to be done. It's a strange and fascinating shift: less about typing every character myself, more about knowing exactly what "good" looks like and steering toward it.

Why I build

At the core, I do this because I like solving problems. That's the whole reason I became a developer — code is just the most satisfying tool I've found for making problems disappear. And I've got a slightly opinionated take on what good work looks like:

Good code is the code nobody notices.

The best solutions are invisible. Nothing breaks, nothing feels clunky, everything just works — and no one ever thinks about the effort underneath. Chasing that quiet, seamless quality is most of the fun for me.

Over the years I've picked up more than just backend and frontend chops. I learned design in Illustrator, I can produce videos, I've made animations. I like being able to take an idea and carry it all the way from "wouldn't it be cool if" to something you can actually see, use, or watch.

Life away from the keyboard

I'm not only the person hunched over a laptop, I promise. I'm a big fan of sports and staying active — tennis, triathlon, running, cycling, or honestly just about any activity you throw at me. If it gets me moving and outside, I'm in. I've found that the best debugging often happens somewhere in the middle of a run, far away from the actual bug.

What this blog is about

So why start writing here? Simple: I test a lot of stuff, and I want a place to share it.

Expect posts about the things I'm genuinely curious about and constantly tinkering with:

• Homelabs and self-hosting — the joy (and occasional pain) of running your own stuff
• AI tools — what I'm trying, what actually works, and my honest point of view on the hype
• Videogame development — a longtime creative itch I keep scratching
• Software news — interesting things happening in our world, filtered through my own take

Basically, this is my corner of the internet to share the cool things I find, the tools I put through their paces, and my perspective on all of it. No fluff, no marketing-speak — just an experienced developer poking at interesting things and telling you what he thinks.

Thanks for stopping by this early. Things are just getting started here, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

See you in the next one.

— Kenneth