Available for interesting problems
Hotdin Gurning
Software Engineer · currently nerding out over AI
“I build software that mostly does what I told it to.”
Engineer by trade, tinkerer by compulsion. I build web apps, automate the dull bits, and lately I've been deep in AI — teaching models to be confidently wrong, then quietly fixing them. Occasionally I ship things I'm actually proud of.
A photo of me goes here, once I find one I don't actively dislike.
A bit about me
About
I'm a software engineer who likes systems that are boring in production and interesting in the README. I care about clean architecture, fast feedback loops, and naming things well enough that nobody has to ask what they do.
Most of my work lives at the intersection of product and platform — close enough to users to know why a feature matters, close enough to infrastructure to know why it's slow.
When I'm not shipping, I'm refactoring something nobody asked me to refactor.
A few things that are true:
- PHP. No hype. Just results
- Boring architecture wins surprisingly often
- If it needs a 20-minute explanation, it's probably too complicated
Journal
Things I've written down
Half-formed thoughts on engineering, AI, and whatever I was nerd-sniped by this week.
How I Accidentally Learned LangChain and LangGraph
I thought I was learning AI. Instead, I ended up learning why software engineering principles become even more important when one of your dependencies can confidently make things up.
AI · Langchain · Langgraph · Python
Building this site, or: how I over-engineered a homepage
Why a personal site got a monorepo, two apps, a database, and a content model. Spoiler: because it was fun.
Engineering · Monorepo · Meta
I asked an LLM to name my variables. It was worse than me.
A short, mostly-true story about pair-programming with a model that confidently suggested `dataData2Final`.
AI · Developer Life · Naming
Selected work
Things I've built
Atur Uang
A money manager that tracks every rupiah so I can pretend I'm in control.
This Website, Apparently
A monorepo personal platform that's wildly over-engineered for a homepage — on purpose.
Side quests
Things I made for fun
Smaller experiments and weekend rabbit holes. Some are useful, some are just me proving a point to myself. No warranty.
Regex Dungeon
A game where the only weapon is a regular expression. Reviews are mixed.
Markdown to Mood
Sentiment analysis for your commit messages. Spoiler: you were frustrated.
Say hello
Contact
Got an idea, a job, or a strong opinion about tabs vs spaces? My inbox is open and surprisingly responsive.
gurningku@gmail.com