About Me

Hi! This is Yongfu. There are a few things that I really enjoy doing, and they all involve some form of creation—hiking, reading, writing, introspection, and open-source software development. I also enjoy talking with another person, as long as the talk is bidirectional, authentic, mutually focused, and empathetic.

I share my inspirations here, mostly originating from, or during, the activities I enjoy. It started out as a place for sharing programming-related knowledge and the open-source projects I worked on. Currently, I also write about ideas and thoughts stemming from personal experiences and books I’ve read.

About Programming

I’m a big fan of programming. During graduate school, I use Python for most of my research work. In my spare time, I code web apps with JavaScript and Vue (and sometimes Python, for backend processing).

R is the language that brought me to the world of programming (during my third year in college when I was 20). The main forces that drove me to learn R were R Markdown and ggplot2: I was fascinated by R’s ability to create beautiful things. R also introduced me to the world of web programming (thanks to Yihui!) since there is a big community developing HTML templates for R Markdown. Later, I learned web programming in a much more systematic way through Harvard’s CS50’s web online course (such a great introductory course for Full Stack development) and continued to learn new technologies by writing apps I found interesting (my projects).