Projects

Description: BetterPrep is an application that helps technical interviewees practice LeetCode style questions with another person over the Internet. It is a ground-up rewrite of Peer Prep.

My Role: I'm the sole developer for this project, in charge of UI/UX design and implementation, backend system architecture and engineering, database management, DevOps etc.

Why?: I didn't have much experience building a full stack application, so this was a way for me to learn up React, microservice routing, Kubernetes, and deploying apps to the Internet. Plus since everyone is hiring Go engineers now...

Status: In progress

Lessons Learnt:

1. Don't obsess over perfect code.

Technologies Used:

• React.js
• Node.js
• Spring Boot
• Go
• PostgreSQL
• MongoDB
• Docker

Description: Coursework for CS3203: Software Engineering Project. In this project, a team of 6 software engineers are tasked to write a static analyzer for a fictional programming language called SIMPLE. The project's implementation language must be in C++ or Java.

My Role: I co-designed and developed the Source Processor library, and took the initiative to manage the build toolchain with CMake. To improve developer experience and code quality, I:

• Configured clang-format to enforce a consistent code style.
• Set up GitHub Actions continuous integration workflows to automatically validate code quality before release.
• Tuned compiler settings for Clang on macOS and MSVC on Windows for optimum, high-performance production builds, and enable strict compile-time checks to catch potential memory bugs early.
• Improved our project build duration by 10%, shaving 30 seconds off by caching and parallalising jobs.

As the project leader, I guided the team to deliver features on time, established effective development workflows, and led SCRUM rituals, including biweekly sprint planning and twice-weekly standups.

Status: Completed and archived

Lessons Learnt:

1. For projects of this size and scope, SCRUM felt like a waste of time and energy. I’m not saying it’s unimportant—it probably works better when the requirements are vague, like in real-world software engineering. But in our case, most of the biweekly sprints were spent managing GitHub Issues (which tracked contributions for grading) and writing the project report—tasks that could have easily been done asynchronously.
2. (Not) C++. I now understand how OOP works in C++, along with smart, dumb, silly, and zany pointers (yes, all of them), plus the whole ordeal with file headers. However, this project just didn’t need most of the language's powerful features—and honestly, it felt like overkill given how cumbersome C++ can be.
3. The study of programming languages is very interesting. I wished I had another semester in school to learn more about how compilers work, because Clang is basically black magic to me.
4. Team synergy > individual skill. We had each others' backs when our project's progress went south.

Achievements:

• Final grade: A
• 0 memory leaks
• Unverified sources reported that my team built the cohort-wide fastest Source Processor library

Technologies Used:

• C++17
• CMake
• Catch2
• GitHub Actions
• leaks (macOS memory leak detection tool)

Description: Team Project component for CS4248: Natural Language Processing.

My Role: Performed data cleaning, preparation, and feature engineering using word2vec and GloVe. Used naïve models for baseline performance benchmarking to evaluate and compare more complex models.

Status: Completed

Description: Team Project component for CS3219: Software Engineering Principles and Patterns. In this project, a team of 5 software engineers build a collaborative technical interview practice platform called Peer Prep (or better understood as multiplayer Leetcode). The project has no restrictions on the choice of technology stack.

My Role: As the team's backend software engineer, I designed, built, and wrote unit and integration tests for the question bank service and user matching service. I supported the team's gitops by transferring knowledge on git techniques and best practices, and actively participated in code and application design reviews.

Status: Completed and archived (no one wanted to pay the cloud bills)

Achievements:

• Learnt RabbitMQ, Socket.io, and Prisma ORM, and implemented the backend service for user matching, all within 3 days

Technologies Used:

• TypeScript
• Node.js
• Express.js
• MongoDB
• Mongoose
• PostgreSQL
• Prisma
• RabbitMQ
• Socket.io
• Docker

Description: Team Project component for CS4243: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

My Role: Performed data cleaning, preparation, and feature engineering using edge detection filters.

Status: Completed and archived

Description: Team Project component for CS3244: Machine Learning. Forecasting the price trend of exchange-traded funds using machine learning models.

My Role: Performed data cleaning, preparation, and pre-training analysis on time series data using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Used linear models for baseline performance benchmarking to evaluate and compare more complex models.

Status: Completed and archived

Description: Individual project component for CS3243: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. It covers classic search algorithms, including Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Dijkstra's Algorithm, A* Search, and adversarial search algorithms like Minimax, along with optimization techniques such as Alpha-Beta Pruning.

My Role: Algorithm designer

Status: Completed and archived

Description: Entry for 2022 Huawei Cloud SPARK Hackathon. A mobile application for short-form educative video content.

My Role: UI/UX developer, pitch deck designer and copywriter.

Status: Completed and archived

Achievements:

• Semifinalist (top 25)

Technologies Used:

• Figma
• FlutterFlow

Description: Entry for NUS Hackers' 2022 Hack&Roll 24-hour Hackathon. A mobile application that sends push notifications containing arbitrary messages, a tool for friendly annoyance.

My Role: Mobile developer (for an hour, until I realized my laptop can't run Android device emulations without overheating and killing itself), demo slide deck designer, application tester.

Status: Incomplete and abandoned (we gave up)

Lessons Learnt:

1. Hackathons are meant to test the speed of developing new ideas into usable prototypes. Teams should use technologies that they are already familiar with to validate the ideas. Learning to program for an entirely unfamiliar platform (mobile) within 24 hours is commendable but also a footgun waiting to happen.
2. By midnight, it was obvious that there was only one programmer that had the hardware and skill to continue developing the app. The rest of us could not do much but to repackage our idea to fit the whatever limited functionality that the programmer could stuff into the codebase. That night, I learnt that Hack&Roll's freebies were pretty awesome and they've got crazy sponsors. I still have Jane Street's XS size t-shirt that fits like an XL.

Technologies Used:

• Flutter
• Google Slides

Description: Team Project component for CS2103T: Software Engineering. An application to manage marketing leads.

My Role: Software engineer, SCRUM master.

Status: Completed and archived

Achievements:

• Final grade: A-
• Implemented local file encryption and password protection feature.

Technologies Used:

• Java 11
• JavaFX
• Jackson
• JUnit
• GitHub Actions

Description: Individual Project component for CS2103T: Software Engineering. A silly chatbot-style todo list application, where Ainsley Harriot becomes your personal assistant.

My Role: Software engineer

Status: Completed and archived

Technologies Used:

• Java 11
• JavaFX

Description: Completed as part of CP2106: Independent Software Development Project. A pair of students propose, develop, iterate, and present a software project over the summer break. My teammate and I created Sponsorr!, a sponsor-matching platform for businesses and event organizers.

My Role: Frontend developer, UI/UX designer, quality assurance.

Status: Completed and archived

Lessons Learnt:

• I love designing application frontends, but I really don't like programming them.
• Learning git was a pain at first, but it also became one of my most valuable skills that helped me through my coursework, internship, and currently my full-time job.
• Being mentored by a friend felt strange ("how is he THIS good at this at my age?"), but it turned out to be a blessing.

Achievements:

• Project achievement level: Artemis (Extreme)
• (Trust me bro) A coursemate complimented my UI implementation, saying: "Dude I love your app frontend, it's so clean!"

Technologies Used:

• TypeScript
• Vue.js
• Vuetify
• Figma
• Cypress
• GCP Firebase
• GitHub Actions