What I do
In my day job, I'm building Next.js apps and spend a lot of time advocating for web standards and pushing to improve our performance. As a part of this effort, I've been researching Solid as an alternative that has a low barrier of entry for React developers and 🚀Astro for people who want a fullstack, lightweight and HTML-first framework. My current favorite technologies are 🎈11ty and Web Components.
How I got here
I learned HTML in the Dreamweaver days when I was about 12, but my dad taught it to me using a simple text editor and Ctrl + R. As a result, I always ended up tinkering with HTML and viewing source on ones that looked far beyond what I knew to build. I never got beyond alert("Hello world!") or even got to put my site on the internet, but it always felt like a place I could belong.
Years later in school, I learnt a bit of Python and went through a rebellious phase and didn't want to code like my dad. I ended up going to university for mechanical engineering and really enjoyed that. Because of nature of the course, I didn't get access to lathes, milling machines or welding stations outside of coursework, but I'm a tinkerer. I need to play and experiment with things to learn so I started to get bored. Since I had easy access to computers, I naturally gravitated towards learning to code.
I started with Java so I can get as much help from my dad as possible, but I kept trying to learn how to code on Arudinos so I can marry up my experience with both coding and mechanical engineering. I did end up doing this for a while and brought in more coding into my engineering coursework, but I eventually realized that I just really enjoy coding. I learned a lot about programming paradigms, different languages, and touched on databases. Eventually, I did my masters in Computer Vision and Machine Learning, where I learned a lot of Math, Python and C++.
In 2020, I started working as a software engineer doing fullstack Java development building web applications, which made it feel like I've come full circle in my programming journey. My tinkering became a lot more focused again, so I delved deeper and immersed myself in as much of the web development community as possible. And this was my introduction to React.
The Road Ahead
I've been playing with all sorts of web technologies with a strong skew towards the frontend. My focus has been understanding technologies well enough so I can pick and suggest the right tool for the job. The kind of sites and apps I build most now are content heavy sites with interactivity, rather than a highly dynamic application with super deep sessions.
When digital is the default way that we make services, slowness is exclusionary.