**Location:** Seattle, Washington
**Origin:** Originally from Taipei, Taiwan
**Current Role:** Senior Software Engineer at a Seattle-based fintech startup
**Years of Experience:** 7 years in tech
**Age:** 29
I moved to Seattle in 2018 to pursue my Master's in Computer Science at the University of Washington. What was supposed to be a two-year academic journey turned into a love affair with the Pacific Northwest - the coffee culture, the tech scene, and yes, even the rain.
Growing up in Taipei's bustling tech district, I was surrounded by electronics and gadgets. My father ran a small computer repair shop, and I spent my afternoons there, learning to troubleshoot hardware issues before I could properly write essays. My mother, a mathematics teacher, instilled in me a love for problem-solving that naturally led me to programming.
28Posts
357Views
52Top Post
Posts by Maya Chen
28 posts
Life in the USA
Networking and Career Growth in Silicon Valley
The Reality Check That Changed My Approach
Understanding the Silicon Valley Networking Ecosystem
Building Meaningful Co...
Programming
Database Design: Fundamentals of Good Database Architecture
"Easy," I thought. "I'll just add a column to the users table."
Technology
Headless CMS: Why Everyone's Talking About Decoupling (And Why You Should Care)
The Traditional CMS Problem
What Headless Actually Means
The Real Benefits (Beyond the Hype)
The Players Worth Knowing...
Backend
REST API Design Best Practices Tutorial 2025 Node.js Express Python Flask Examples
Learn REST API design principles through real-world examples from building payment APIs at a Seattle fintech startup, co...
Databases
SQL Tutorial for Beginners Complete Guide Database Queries
Master SQL fundamentals with practical examples from a fintech developer who went from fearing databases to designing en...
Programming
How to Write Functions in JavaScript Python and TypeScript
Master function fundamentals across multiple programming languages with real-world examples, from basic syntax to advanc...
Programming
Git for Beginners: How I Almost Lost Three Months of Code (And What Saved Me)
Git: Your Code’s Time Machine
Setting Up Git: The Seattle Coffee Shop Way
Your First Repository: Starting Fresh
The Thr...
Life in the USA
Seattle vs. Austin: A Developer's Ultimate Deep Dive
The tech world is bigger than just Silicon Valley now. Cities like Seattle and Austin are calling to developers with the...
Python
Arrays: Why I Once Crashed Production with a Simple Loop
Arrays: The Digital Bento Box
The Microsoft Incident
Static vs Dynamic Arrays: The Apartment Analogy
Array Operations:...
Life in the USA
Why I Chose Seattle Over Silicon Valley: A Developer's Story
Every developer starting their career thinks about Silicon Valley. I know I did. But as a software engineer who moved f...
Programming
Big O Notation: Why My AWS Bill Made Me Finally Understand Algorithm Efficiency
How a $30,000 AWS bill taught a developer the real-world importance of Big O notation, with practical examples from Amaz...
Programming
Variables and Data Types: My Late-Night Debugging Stories
The Night I Learned About Type Coercion
What Are Variables, Really?
The Type System Spectrum
Dynamic Typing (Python, J...
Programming
Building Your First Todo App: From "Hello World" to "Oh Wow, I Built Something!"
title: Building Your First Todo App: From “Hello World” to “Oh Wow, I Built Something!”summary: Build your first todo a...
