All of my long-form thoughts on programming, leadership, product design, and more, collected in chronological order.
I recently started learning the C programming language, and yes—I am doing this entirely of my own free will. Most of my coding experience has been with high-level languages, which are incredibly convenient—so much is handled behind the scenes. But that convenience comes at a cost: it hides the lower-level details of how computers actually work.
With packages frequently stolen and no support in sight, I longed for a platform to foster community within my building. That's when I decided to create Civil Street—an app designed to help neighbors connect and collaborate.
Needless to say, I did not want to fail. I studied extra hours and booked weekend study sessions with classmates. The pressure was intense, but it lit a fire under me to make sure I succeeded..
Not to go off on a tangent or anything but I long for this period of time in web development where everything was open source. Website like w3 schools, Stack Overflow, had amazing communities of developers trying to help each other out. Things were available for the internet but it require diligent research and understand software in order find the correct answers. It felt like a hunting game that only provident web surfers could navigate the levels.
Customizing my Xanga page with sparkly cursors, autoplay music, and falling stars — copying snippets of CSS and JavaScript I didn't understand, and learning through trial and error. It wasn't formal, but it was my first taste of coding — and the moment I realized I could shape the internet, even if I didn't fully know how yet.
I was just a kid with an HP desktop, a lot of curiosity, and maybe too much empathy for my mom's wallet. This is a reflection on the early memories that quietly shaped my path to becoming a software developer — from blue screens to black boxes, and all the restarts in between.
In fifth grade, I had my first real encounter with a computer — in a hot, overcrowded lab filled with tangled wires, floppy disks, and greasy keyboards. Between typing lessons and sneaking onto Neopets, I didn't know it then, but that dusty computer lab planted the first seed of curiosity that would one day lead me into tech.