Breaking Changes

I recently came across a short essay Lauren Tan wrote a while back, “Warning — Breaking Changes”, and one quote really struck a chord with me:

Upgrading software that contains breaking changes involves fixing something that already works. Depending on the degree to which you relied on it, upgrading can sometimes be a painful process.

In the world of software development, we are all too familiar with breaking changes.

Whenever a package releases a major version—altering API signatures, dropping deprecated functions, or swapping out underlying dependencies—you run npm install to upgrade, and what awaits you is often a wall of red error messages.

The legacy code was running perfectly fine in production, but to move forward, you still have to tear apart and refactor something that already worked.

Upgrading isn’t just about changing code; to secure resources, you sometimes have to convince management why a refactor is necessary and what impact it will bring.

Looking back at my career over the past few years—whether it was committing deeply to software engineering, switching jobs, or eventually packing my bags and moving to Japan—every “upgrade” in the eyes of outsiders was, in essence, a breaking change.

The Seemingly Glamorous Major Release

During my first year working abroad, whether on social media or catching up with friends in Taiwan, the most common reactions were: “Wow, working in Japan must be amazing,” “Life seems so fulfilling,” or “Big tech companies must have so many resources.”

By external metrics, things looked great: securing a visa, earning a decent salary, moving into a larger apartment with a well-equipped kitchen, later buying a home, working with architectures I never had access to before, and meeting developers from all over the world.

In junior high, I hated studying, and my grades were near the bottom. In ninth grade, influenced by my environment and realizing that education was my ticket to turning life around, I managed to get into the electronics department of a national vocational high school.

I was fortunate. Stumbling into computer science was partly an accident—simply because my test scores weren’t high enough for electrical engineering.

That happy accident dramatically shaped my subsequent career.

The market demand for software development has been enormous, so finding a job was rarely a worry. Compared to other industries, tech makes it much easier to obtain work visas and has a relatively lower bar for permanent residency.

The advent of AI might rewrite software development, but I still believe studying CS holds immense value.

It doesn’t just teach you how to write code; computer architecture, operating systems, data structures and algorithms, statistics, and linear algebra are all profoundly useful for systematic problem-solving.

Yet behind any major upgrade, few people see the hidden costs left out of the migration guide.

Moving to a foreign country meant detaching myself from the homeland I had known for over two decades.

Close friends are separated by an ocean. Language and cultural differences feel like an invisible wall, adding friction to even the smallest daily interactions. Over time, people inevitably drift apart.

A deep sense of loneliness often hits without warning. And when you do share your struggles, many people’s initial reaction is incomprehension:

“You’re earning a high income—why can’t you just be content?”

That leaves a lump in your throat, making it even harder to confide.

Through all of this, I am deeply grateful to have had my wife, Haruhi, by my side, allowing me to focus wholeheartedly on my work and personal growth.

Refactoring Without a Rollback

Real life has no rollback mechanism.

Once you take that step forward, you have no choice but to accept that old dependencies are no longer compatible. The friction of adapting to a new life, the anxiety, the frustration of cultural collisions—they’re like compiler errors spitting out endlessly in the terminal. Sometimes, just as you fix one bug, another tear appears elsewhere.

I used to think that as long as my tech skills improved, my career kept advancing, and I landed better offers, much of that anxiety would naturally resolve itself.

Over time, I came to realize that human emotional capacity is finite. Every major leap in life is fundamentally a trade-off.

I gained broader perspectives and personal growth; in exchange, I had to surrender the comfort and companionship I had long taken for granted. Perhaps that’s the cost of refactoring.

”How are you going?”

Toward the end of her post, Lauren Tan notes that even when people seem to have their work and personal lives meticulously sorted out on the surface, deep down they might be fighting intense emptiness and loneliness all on their own.

In engineering circles, we’re so used to discussing architecture, technical breakthroughs, compensation, and career ladders, but rarely does anyone pause to talk about how disorienting and messy personal adjustments can be. Often, the people who seem most self-reliant and composed are simply the best at keeping those struggles hidden.

If you have the chance, try reaching out to friends who recently changed environments, took on new challenges, or haven’t been in touch for a while, and ask them:

“How are you going?”

When life throws major breaking changes your way, a warm, genuine check-in can sometimes be the very encouragement needed to keep fixing things, line by line.