Mike Johnson, Tech Lead

Hi, I'm Mike

I am currently the Director of Engineering at Vinovest, where we make investing in liquid assets work for everybody. I have always been full-stack but usually focus on one or the other at a time. These days I prefer Go, Python or Typescript with a React frontend but I've also been really enjoying web components.

This site is mostly about computering but a little more about me: I am a former US Marine and I still try to run though cycling lately has been my passion. A baker once told me I had the best rolls around (though we were in the middle of the mountains of Northern Colorado so I made a joke about it). The first time I used a cell phone was on the peak of Mt. Elbert.

I also have a /now page for more about me.

Posts

Bad Brains

What counts the most is what we do for our own sake.

(January 1, 2026)

Raymond Hettinger doesn't know that he got me my first tech job

Live coding is dumb

(August 8, 2025)

Go

Ported the blog to a Go backend

(July 27, 2025)

Deleting services tonight

A long migration finally completed

(May 21, 2025)

sqlx with Generics

Adding generics to sqlx

(April 2, 2025)

A new sqlx fork

Describing plans for the sqlx fork and the reasons behind it.

(March 22, 2025)

Mobx Memoizes Components (You don't need React Compiler)

If you're using Mobx and React, you might be tempted to use the React Compiler to auto-memoize your components. But you don't need it.

(June 15, 2024)

Opting out of AI scraping

I published my first ever robots.txt to opt out of AI scraping.

(August 7, 2023)

PHP Upgrades with Rector

My experience using Rector to help automate PHP upgrades for the last year.

(June 24, 2023)

Upsides of Mongo ObjectIds in Postgres

While porting from MongoDB to Postgres, I decided to keep using and generating the MongoDB ObjectIds.

(June 22, 2023)

Preventing Cache Stampedes

I got to do some fun stuff at work involving cache expiration algorithms. It's not every day I get to cite a paper in a merge request.

(January 21, 2023)

Ported to NextJS

I ported this blog to NextJS.

(January 16, 2023)