I'm Kumar McMillan 👋 and this is mostly a historic archive of my writing on UI engineering, testing, TypeScript, and other stuff.
Around 2026, I became excited enough about AI for coding that I started publishing new articles again. I build with AI daily at Shopify and am a big fan of the pi coding agent. I build lots of internal tools at work but I do publish general purpose (non-Shopify) tools like pie[xtensions, agents, skills, and stuff].
Back when I wrote code by hand, my favorite part was always building the software -- seeing it come to life, seeing users interacting with it. We are entering the most exciting era for software builders that I've witnessed in my 25+ year career. There's still a lot to figure out with harnessing and safety but AI feels like the right foundation. AI data center growth is unsustainable but I'm optimistic about local models.
I try to publish code in the open whenever I can, even prototypes and experiments. Previously, I was building web applications from front to back at Bluecrew and Mozilla, with a love for React, Redux, type theory, fast tests, and slow evenings.
You can see my LinkedIn for an overview of some great projects and teams I've had the honor to collaborate with.
You can find my older articles in a few other places, too:
Originally, Farmdev was a freelance service I started with Collin Olan in 2003. We under charged our clients (d'oh) but we both fell enough in love with the web that we still build on it today.