Writing on Blogfolio Najib

Buffalo Means Paper: Learning Language Through Association-Based Translation

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:28:00 +0700

My wife just told me something, and I genuinely didn’t know who to laugh at.

So my mother-in-law teaches English tutoring classes. One day, one of her students was practicing some exercises. The conversation went something like this (in Javanese, roughly translated):

Student A: “Hey, what does ‘buffalo’ mean?”

Student B: “Paper.”

Student A: “Be serious!”

Student B: “I am! Buffalo paper. So it means paper.”

I went quiet for a moment after hearing this. Not because I was confused, but because in that silence I realized: the logic actually checks out. And that was the more confusing part.

A Stepladder for IT Projects

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a certain type of person who makes me pause, furrow my brow, and nod along, while internally raising my hand and shouting for a stepladder.

I call them high-talkers. Not because their voice is loud. But because the way they speak feels like an invitation to summit Mount Everest… without gear, without a map, and without any physical preparation whatsoever.

And ironically, I run into this type most often in IT projects.

Best Practices for Building APIs in Laravel and Go: Notes from a Real Project

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:28:00 +0700

In the PHP-to-Go migration project I worked on, there was a phase where I had to audit every existing route and controller. The goal was simple: before migrating, understand which patterns are solid and which need to go. The result? Well, it was… enlightening hahaha.

The project profile looked like this:

460+ routes in api.php¹
58 controllers of various sizes and patterns
5 auth guards: user-api, partner-api, open-api, open-api-limited, tms-api
Varied rate limiting: from 3/minute up to 100/minute

This article isn’t a “how to build an API” tutorial. These are notes on patterns and anti-patterns I found, plus how the same patterns map to Go. So if you’re migrating or starting a new project, hopefully you can skip some of the mistakes I already discovered hehe~

Loosening the Rules and What Comes With It

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So anyway, in the middle of April I typed out a fairly long message in a WhatsApp group for my students. It was about GitHub Education, a GitHub program that gives free access to a collection of developer tools for enrolled students and educators.

Among those tools: GitHub Copilot. An AI assistant well-known in developer circles as a useful coding partner, with autocomplete, code review, and even writing chunks of code on its own.

Choosing a Tech Stack: Between Ego and Business

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So anyway, a while back I was sitting in an internal meeting, Zoom or Google Meet, I honestly can’t remember, when a colleague suddenly lit up with enthusiasm:

“What if we migrate to microservices while we’re at it? To be modern, to be scalable, to be-”

To be what, exactly? Our system at the time had two main features, a team of four people, and traffic that barely hit a thousand requests a day on its busiest day. The case for microservices? Zero. The enthusiasm for it? A hundred hahaha.

Why One Bug Can Take Three Days

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“This is just a small bug, right? Should take 5 minutes.”

Ever heard this one? Or maybe its variants: “Just change one line of code, right?”, “How can it take a whole day to fix this?”

If you’re a developer, you almost certainly have. And that line usually comes from a boss, project manager, or client, someone who doesn’t need to know what an N+1 query is, but needs to understand why something that looks simple takes a non-simple amount of time.

Clean Architecture: From Spaghetti Code to Readable Code

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I once wrote code that made perfect sense at the time. The logic was clear, the flow was neat, the variables were descriptive. Three months later, I opened the same file, “what was this even supposed to do?”

If you’ve ever felt the same way, welcome. You’re not alone hehe.

This article isn’t a formal lecture on software architecture. It’s my notes on Clean Architecture, explained in a way I wish someone had told me when I was still in university, not with jargon that makes your head spin.

Decision Journal: When It's Time to Migrate Your Tech Stack

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There was a moment where I stopped typing, leaned back in my chair, and realized: “This isn’t about refactoring anymore.”

I was debugging a bug in a GPS tracker system that had been running for years¹. The bug was simple, vehicle position reports weren’t updating on the dashboard. But to fix it, I had to trace through four different files, two business logic layers tangled together, and one query written without an index. An hour later, the fix was two lines. Two lines.

Migrating Legacy PHP to Go: Why, How, and Lessons Learned

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been in a position where a PHP codebase had grown beyond its limits, new features were harder to add, bugs appeared more frequently, and every deployment felt like flipping a coin. Not because PHP is bad, but because a system built over years without clear architecture eventually becomes its own worst enemy. I remember one day having to rollback three times in a single afternoon because of a “simple” deploy. My stress level that day… yeah, let’s not go there hahaha.

Business Process Automation with UiPath RPA: When an Rp8 Billion Difference Starts Feeling Normal

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a phase in some jobs where your sense of scale shifts without asking for permission. When you look at billions, tens of billions, and hundreds of millions every day, something strange can happen: one day you see a Rp8 billion difference in a bond worksheet, and your first reaction is not panic. It is more like, “Alright, another mismatch. Let me check it for a minute.”

That was the disturbing part.

Business Process Automation with UiPath RPA: Start with the Boring Work First

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I still remember the phase where every morning looked exactly the same: open the same files, check the same data, and send the same report format. Day one felt normal. Day three got boring. By day ten, I was thinking, “Is this really human work, or just copy-paste with extra steps?” hehe.

That was when I started seriously exploring RPA (Robotic Process Automation), especially with UiPath. Not because it was trendy, but because we had a real operational problem: too many repetitive tasks consuming team hours for very little business value.

Git Notes: installation, configuration, and examples

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 22:00:01 +0700

Introduction #

Git is a distributed version control system that is free and open source designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Meanwhile, GitHub is a complete developer platform and service for building, scaling, and delivering secure software using Git.

Git Installation #

Git installation for Windows is as follows,

Windows

First download the Git installer at https://git-scm.com/downloads. Then open that installer.

Follow the next steps. Just click Next, make sure it’s on default, then next again. As usual~~

VPS Notes: setting up the first VPS that isn't the first

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 20:14:01 +0700

So anyway, basically what happened was a few years ago I once randomly ~~just ‘cause~~ tried buying VPS service from DigitalOcean¹. The reason was… none. It was just for fun, why would there need to be a reason hehe~

Short story, that VPS from DO or DigitalOcean didn’t even last a month and I already ended it. After several full moons and getting lost here and there², finally my choice fell to Hetzner¹. A cloud server provider that people said was quite difficult to register for. Turns out, yeah it really was! Hahaha.

Online final defense and becoming part of the pandemic graduation cohort

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:32:00 +0700

The final project or thesis defense is a memorable moment for many students. Including me. Especially when it’s done online for the first time.

Offline and the Jinx #

It all started from a joke among us (me and my boarding house friends) right when exam week was about to end. “Hey, after midterms there are still five days left, you guys aren’t going home to your hometown first, are you?” said my friend from Jakarta.

Thesis defense. The ups and downs of the journey to a third degree

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 18:55:34 +0700

Alhamdulillah thanks to the pleasure of Allah SWT, the prayers of family and friends, I completed my thesis defense on July 21, 2023 for the third time in my life. So, this is the story…

Idle Questions and Encouragement from Parents #

It all started when my lectures were about to enter the second semester. According to campus regulations, the process of changing academic advisors would be carried out. It is the thesis supervisor who will become the academic advisor for the students they supervise.

The end of the wicked

Fri, 26 May 2023 10:34:44 +0700

Man’s becoming more corrupt now, godless, wicked, and cruel
The soulless man stood silenced, their empty promises rang so true
Lust and power, indulgence, no fear left with his sins, how does this end?
Chastisement worse than the flood, spread the word, it’s all through
As if we haven’t swam enough in this life of misery
We won’t be here tomorrow, hold on to me for one last time

City of Angels

Fri, 05 Jul 2019 10:34:44 +0700

There was a girl with a sky full of stars in her eyes
She was chasing a world that was so fast it left her behind
She ran for days but the days became years
Hope went away as her smile turned to tears
But now there’s lines on the face of the girl with the stars in her eyes