Hello, world.
Happy Memorial Day.
I'd been wanting to create a personal blog and to build a Gatsby site for some time now, and I decided to tackle both at once by rebuilding my portfolio site, which I'd initially made using Create React App. Even during quarantine, I've been very busy studying and working on several other projects, so I deliberately set aside some time this long weekend to work on this project.
Fortunately, my familiarity and experience with the React ecosystem and GraphQL along with Gatsby's excellent docs made this more straightforward than I had anticipated. (Of course, I did run into issues with building and deploying to Netlify. Let's just say that capitals are important.) In the process, I did simplify my portfolio site design some, mainly to avoid some of the complicated media queries I had in my previous version. I'd also gotten some feedback regarding the horizontal scrollbars, so I shifted to a more conventional vertical scrolling design for the Projects and Skills pages.
My primary goal for this blog is to document my studies and personal projects as I embark on my software engineering career. One of the things I appreciate most about tech is the never-ending list of things to learn. Here's a list of some of the topics I'm currently tackling:
- ReactJS
- Vue.js
- Angular
- Amazon Web Services
- C#
I'm particularly drawn to exploring ReactJS, Vue.js, and Angular because I really enjoy building front-end apps and am curious about the different approaches these three popular libraries/frameworks take. I have three different personal projects in mind, and the goal is to use each of them to plumb the depths of the three libraries/frameworks as I layer on additional functionality. I've already started the React project, but the other two are still in the planning phases. As I build out these projects, I'll share more about them in future posts.
Professionally, I'll be working with C# and the .NET framework on the back-end and Angular (and consequently, TypeScript) on the front-end, so I'm trying to increase my comfort with strongly typed languages. Additionally, while I've recently passed the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Exam, I'm digging into the specific services that my company uses, as the exam is quite broad and general in its scope.
Overall, I'd like to get back into the practice of writing more consistently, and I'm hoping that I will do so now that I have this blog. Feel free to reach out via Twitter or the Contact page of this site with any feedback, suggestions, or comments!