I am U-Zyn Chua. I build, research and write about technology, AI and the open web.
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Let’s Build Like It’s 2005

Software engineering has become overwhelmingly complex.

Want to build something today? Good luck. First, you’ll need to wade through an ocean of decisions: which tech stack to choose, how to set it up, which JS/CSS/TS/TSX frameworks to use, which build tools, linters, and testing environments to adopt, how to structure your project, organize your repository, and configure CI/CD pipelines. The list goes on. If this is something to built by a product + engineering team, despite more headcount, the complexity is often compounded even more.

Even after spending days setting everything up, you’ll never quite feel satisfied. You’ll tinker, tweak, and second-guess every decision for weeks. You’ll obsess over improving your stack, striving for a perfection that always seems just out of reach.

Meanwhile, only 5% of your time goes into building your actual product. The other 95%? That’s spent on the stack.

It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating.

But it wasn’t always like this.

In 2005, we just build

Back in 2005, things were simpler. We didn’t have CI/CD pipelines, JSX, HTML5, or a hundred other acronyms to wrangle. We worked with what we had, and we got things done. If that meant coding in PHP, so be it. If that meant using Notepad to write code, so be it. If that meant aligning layouts with <table> tags and <br>s, so be it. And yes, debugging live wasn’t unheard of—as long as no one accidentally dropped the production database.

We mainly had one major problem to solve back then: Internet Explorer 6. We overcame it, and we laughed about it later.

Building should be fun

In 2005, building was fun. It wasn’t bogged down by layers of complexity. We focused on the joy of creating, on bringing our ideas to life.

It’s 2025 now, and I’m ready to reclaim that joy. I’m resolving to build like it’s 2005. No over-engineering. No unnecessary complexity. Just building.

So here’s to simple tools, straightforward solutions, and rediscovering the fun in creation.

It’s 2025. Let’s build like it’s 2005!