IndieCoder

My Year in Code 2025

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is my yearly wrap up of the things I built in 2025. I worked on a bunch of side projects again this year, and these are the ones that actually turned into something I’m proud of.

I learned a lot from some of these projects. Some were pure curiosity. Some were just me building a random idea late at night because it would not leave my head.

Badee: Meditation app

Absolute Neovim

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using kickstart.nvim for over a year, and now I’m finally ready to start my own Neovim journey. By “my own” I mean I’m writing configs myself, but I’ll still be copying from everywhere because that’s how this works.

My goal is to keep things as minimal as I can without loading unnecessary plugins. But if I just really like a plugin or it saves me from boring work, I’ll use it.

My Rubber Duck Has Read the Docs

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today while I was building a number memory game with React, I encountered a strange behaviour with input focus.

There was a grid of input fields and I wanted to auto-focus next inputs sequentially after entering a number - a standard OTP-input feature. The first input was auto-focused on mount with useEffect so there was no problem. But the auto-focus just wouldn’t work on the second input. However, once the second one was focused manually, the rest of the flow worked fine.

The 3x5 Life Hack

Sun, 18 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

You don’t have to wake up at 5 a.m., grind for 3 hrs in the gym, or write a 2-pages essay in your journal to become a better version of yourself. You only need 0.01% of your day - just 15 min - to energize your body, gain mental clarity and achieve your goals.

3 habits, 5 minutes each

I’m a vibe-driven productivity guy. Which just means I am ambitious, but lazy, inconsistent and have low discipline. Some days I’m in flow, giving my all, but on others, I’m just floating through. I’ve been searching a system that I can stick to, something simple, doable, and actually effective. Then I came up with this idea of 3x5 Life Hack.

Telegram Bot in Go

Sat, 10 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I recently built a simple Telegram bot using Go. The bot is designed to help users find information of a specific date. For example, if you send a message like “2025-01-10”, the bot will respond with basic calendar information, fetched events and birthdays from Wikipedia, and a APOD image from NASA api.

I’ll walk you through how I built it, and for the sake of simplicity, I’ll skip detailed implementation and just show the necessary parts. You can see the full source code here: github.com/IndieCoderMM/tele-droids

Unhooked from YouTube

Thu, 01 May 2025 22:00:00 +0630

I regularly find myself distracted by YouTube. I often start watching a video and then get lost in the endless videos that I never intended to watch. One time, I opened YouTube to search a tutorial while doing a project. But before I could open the search box, the algorithm (who knows me too well) presented a dozen of interesting videos. By the time I noticed, I’d watched an hour of unrelated videos and had no clue what I was doing in the first place.

My Dev Environment Setup

Thu, 01 May 2025 09:00:00 +0630

I recently installed a new OS on my machine and decided to document my setup process.

OS

NAME="Pop!_OS"
VERSION="22.04 LTS"
ID=pop
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"

Terminal Setup: Wezterm

Download wezterm: Wezterm installation
Make appimage executable: chmod +x wezterm.appimage
Move appimage to bin: sudo mv wezterm.appimage /usr/local/bin/wezterm
Add config file: Wezterm Config

CLI Tools

NVM (Node manager): curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.2/install.sh | bash
LazyGit (Git TUI): Repo
FZF (Filter program): sudo apt install fzf
Zoxide (Better cd): curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide/main/install.sh | sh
Bpytop (Resource monitoring): sudo apt install bpytop
OneFetch (Git info): Repo
RipGrep (Search tool): sudo apt-get install ripgrep
LazyDocker (Docker TUI): Repo
DirEnv (Env manager): Repo

Shell Setup: Oh My Zsh

Download zsh: sudo apt install zsh
Make it default shell: chsh -s $(which zsh)
Restart the machine and check: echo $SHELL
Install oh-my-zsh: Repo
Add config file (Require CLI tools installation): Zsh Config

Editor Setup: Neovim

Download neovim: Latest Neovim releases
Run: chmod u+x nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage
Move to bin: sudo mv nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage /usr/local/bin/nvim
Clone config to ~/.config/nvim: IndieCoderMM/nvim-config
Run nvim to setup and install deps.

# Main plugins
1. Lazy
2. NeoTree
3. Mason
4. Telescope
5. Nvim-Cmp
6. Mini (ai, surround, jump2d)
7. Harpoon
8. Kulala
9. GitSigns
10. NvChad-Ui
11. FriendlySnippets
12. TodoComments
13. Treesitter
15. WhichKey

Key swap: CapsLock to Esc

Download gnome-tweaks: sudo apt install gnome-tweaks
Run gnome-tweaks: gnome-tweaks
Go to Keyboard & Mouse > Additional Layout
Change Caps Lock Behavior

Nerd Font

Run nerd font installer: NF Installer
Choose font: Caskaydia Cove Nerd Font

Android Development Setup

JDK Installation

Update and search for JDK: sudo apt-get update && apt search openjdk
Install JDK: sudo apt-get install openjdk-21-jdk
Check installation: java -version

Android SDK Setup

Download the latest version of cmd tools: Android CMD tools
Make a new Android SDK folder: mkdir -p ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools
Extract the downloaded file to the new folder. unzip -d ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools ~/Downloads/android-cmd-tools.zip
Rename the folder: mv ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools/cmdline-tools/ ~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools/latest
Add the following to .zshrc or .bashrc:

export PATH=~/Android/Sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:~/Android/Sdk/emulator:~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools:$PATH
export ANDROID_HOME=~/Android/Sdk

Emulator Setup

List available system images: sdkmanager --list
Install the desired version: sdkmanager "emulator" "platform-tools" "platforms;android-36" "system-images;android-36;google_apis;x86_64"
List available devices: avdmanager list device
Setup AVD with a device: avdmanager -v create avd -n Android_API_36_Google -k "system-images;android-36;google_apis;x86_64" -d pixel_c
Run the emulator: emulator -avd Android_API_36_Google
Configure the device in ~/.android/avd/Android_API_36_Google.avd/config.ini:
Enable this line to direct key events to emulator:

hw.keyboard = yes

Source: Minimal CLI Android Emulator

Awesome Design Resource

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I use these resources in my projects to make the UI development process easier and more efficient.

Tailwind Button - A collection of beautiful buttons
Aceternity - Framer motion components in React, Tailwind
Fancy components - A collection of React components
UI Verse - Tailwind/CSS components
Origin UI - React + Tailwind components
CuiCui - Copy-paste UI components and blocks
Design Spells - Design detail inspiration

Awesome Online Tools

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here is a list of online tools that I use from time to time.

Cobalt - Download anything by pasting a link
Postspark - Generate beautiful screenshots or code
Convertico - Convert files to any format
Remove.bg - Remove background from images
Excalidraw - Create beautiful diagrams
Carbon - Create beautiful code snippets
Dbdiagram - Create database diagrams with DBML
Randomkeygen - Generate secure keys
WebCheck - Check website status
SVGR - Convert SVG to React components

Maze Generation using Prim's Algorithm

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I was working on a game project that required a maze generator. I decided to write a simple maze generator in Go. In this post, I’ll share the code and explain how it works.

My code is in GO but I’ll explain with pseudo-code so that you can easily implement in any language.

Prim’s Algorithm

There are many algorithms for generating mazes, but one of the simplest and most efficient is Prim’s algorithm.

About Me

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hello! I’m Hein Thant, a self-taught developer from Myanmar. I build mobile apps, web apps, and half-finished side projects.

I share my knowledge and thought on this blog. I write about web dev, mobile dev, game dev, algorithms or anything that comes to my mind actually. I hope you find something useful here.

I’m currently working as a full-stack engineer. I also build side projects and contribute to open-source projects in my free time. My goal is to keep shipping projects that make life easier (or just more fun).

Upload Files to AWS S3 from React

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog, we’ll walk through how to upload images and videos (any files) directly from a React client to an AWS S3 bucket. The main benefit of this approach is reducing the server load since we don’t need to upload files to our server. We only need an endpoint to get direct upload access to S3.

In this app, we have 3 parts to set up:

Frontend client with a file input field where users can upload files
Server endpoint to get signed-URL for giving access to S3 bucket
AWS S3 bucket where we can store our files.

Backend

You’ll need the following credentials from your AWS S3 Bucket to access the bucket from your server.

Custom Theme Switcher Hook in React

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to build a custom theme switcher hook in React. By the end, you’ll have a reusable hook that can add dark/light mode to any React project.

We’ll cover:

Creating the hook step-by-step.
Saving the user’s theme preference.
Adding dark/light mode toggle functionality.

Logic

Here’s how the custom hook works:

It checks for a saved theme in local storage.
If no saved theme is found, it checks the system’s dark mode preference.
It updates the theme dynamically and stores the user’s choice for the next session.

Creating a custom hook

This custom hook will handle the logic for switching between light and dark themes. Let’s create a new file called useThemeSwitcher.js and add the following code:

6 Habits to 10x Coding

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Being a good coder is not just about writing efficient and error-free code, but also involves staying organized, managing time and attention effectively, and having a balanced lifestyle. In this article, I want to share 6 simple habits that can help you improve your productivity as a coder.

1. Physical Exercises

Maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle is essential for staying productive whether you’re a coder or not. But regular exercises are important, especially for coders since we spend most of our time sitting in front of a computer. Exercise not only improves our physical health but also boosts our mental clarity and focus.