About
Juntao Qiu · I Code It
Arc
Consulting → product → solo
Focus
Frontend system design
Welcome, I am Juntao — Engineer, Educator, Creator.
Helping developers design and build software
By breaking complexity into structure and guiding the building process with intention — even when AI is involved.
This frontend site is where that mission gets concrete — case studies, patterns, and a hands-on course — alongside icodeit.com.au for posts, tutorials, and books.
Also published & cited across
Hats
How I show up day to day
One person — a few modes. Same thread: make complex frontend work feel legible.
Educator
Courses · YouTube · writing
I unpack frontend system design the way I wish someone had done for me — with runnable examples and honest trade-offs.
Engineer
React · data · performance
Shipping UIs that stay coherent when APIs, teams, and requirements move underneath you.
Solo builder
I Code It
Building curriculum, tools, and this site — so the teaching and the product stay in sync.
Experience
Where I've built
A thin résumé strip — the story lives in the teaching. Swap in exact dates anytime you want them on the record.
Thoughtworks
Consultant — delivery across REA, Domino’s, NAB, MYOB, Huawei, and more. Same lesson everywhere: the UI fails when the mental model and the data model disagree.
2012 - 2023
Atlassian
Product engineering at scale — depth after years of consulting context switches.
2023 – recently
I Code It
Solo — frontend system design, teaching, and tools for the AI-shaped era.
Now
Voices
What people say in the wild
Short notes from YouTube and the course — the kind of feedback that keeps me recording.
“Finally someone spoke about normalisation in the frontend — thank you so much.”
Sachin Y.
YouTube · Normalization explained
“I was making real-time apps the hard way — REST, socket events, state management — you just solved my headache.”
hmm8991
YouTube · Real-time updates
“Keep up the good work, Juntao. Really enjoying your frontend system design series.”
Raunak R.
YouTube · Normalization explained
Philosophy
Why work with my material?
Values
Concrete, step by step
I learn and teach through runnable examples and small iterations — something you can run, change, and break — not big-bang theory. Each pass should make the next step easier.
Explorable, with a clear “why”
I’m investing in interactive, explorable formats — learning you move through, not only read. Along the way I always want the purpose visible: why tests, why normalization, why a boundary — so nothing feels like empty ritual.
Maps and patterns that last
Principles and patterns outlast any one language or framework. I care about keeping a mental map in mind — where you are, what’s next — instead of a pile of disconnected tricks.
What you get
- A reusable framework for frontend work — how you slice data, APIs, rendering, and production concerns — so the next feature isn’t a blank page. That includes the messy middle: normalization, fetching, caching, pagination, realtime, performance users feel, and basics like security and accessibility when they matter.
- A thinking mindset for trade-offs — what to optimize, what to defer, and how to say it out loud — so interviews and real roadmaps feel less like guesswork.
- Grounding in fundamentals and patterns that outlast the hype cycle — so you’re not treating every new stack drop as a full reset. The tools change fast; the underlying questions change more slowly.
I Code It hub
More on the main site
icodeit.com.au is still home for posts, tutorials, books, and course listings. This frontend subsite is the workshop next door — case studies and patterns where the demos need room to breathe.
- Posts
Longer essays and interviews — the stuff I’d put in a letter to a friend who builds UIs.
- Tutorials
Hands-on walkthroughs when you want steps, not slogans.
- Books
FSD Essentials, React Anti-Patterns, TDD with React & TypeScript, and more.
- Courses
Structured paths when you’re ready to go deeper than a single post.
Long-form
Writing on martinfowler.com
Room to stretch out — whole arguments, not just takeaway bullets.
- Data Fetching Patterns in Single-Page Applications
Async state, parallel fetching, fallbacks, prefetching — with trade-offs spelled out.
- Modularizing React Applications with Established UI Patterns
Layering and proven UI architecture applied to real React codebases.
- Refactoring with Codemods to Automate API Changes
Large-scale API migrations with jscodeshift and disciplined refactors.
Books
In print & digital
English-language titles I point people to first — plus everything on Leanpub.
Traditional publishers
- React Anti-Patterns (Packt, 2024)
- Test-Driven Development with React (Apress, 2021)
Leanpub & self-published
Maintainable React, frontend system design, advanced data fetching — browse the full Leanpub catalog.
Video & course
Learn in public — then go deep
On YouTube (@icodeit.juntao) — 11k+ subscribers — I share refactoring, clean code, and frontend technique in shorter form. For a guided path with projects and a capstone, start from Frontend System Design Essentials on Thinkific or the course overview on this site.
This subsite
Case studies & patterns
Runnable walkthroughs for how senior frontend engineers think about data, APIs, performance, and production concerns — browse case studies, patterns, and learning paths as the roadmap grows.
Thanks for stopping by — if something here helped you ship calmer code, that's the whole point.