Hello World: Building My Developer Portfolio

Every developer portfolio starts with a "hello world" post. Here's mine.

The Stack

I built this site with:

• Next.js 16 (App Router) — React Server Components make it easy to fetch content at the server without shipping extra JavaScript to the browser
• Tailwind CSS v4 — utility-first styling that stays out of the way
• shadcn/ui — accessible, unstyled components I can actually customize
• next-mdx-remote — renders MDX from any source, local files today, maybe a remote API tomorrow

Why MDX for the Blog?

I wanted posts to live alongside my code in version control. MDX gives me the full power of Markdown with the option to drop in React components when I need them.

The content layer is abstracted behind a simple API:

const posts = await getAllPosts()
const post = await getPostBySlug('hello-world')

When my post count grows and I want to move them out of the repo, I only need to change the implementation — not a single page or component.

What I'll Write About

Mostly things I'm working through day-to-day:

• Full-stack patterns I find useful
• Things that took me longer than they should have
• Side projects and what I learned building them

If any of that sounds useful, stick around.