Hey there 👋 I am a frontend web developer and I've been working on this side of the web for around four years now. I am a HUGE CSS fan and I love working on it whenever and wherever possible. I am also a big TypeScript fan. Though it took me a couple on months to grasp even the basic idea behind it even when I came from a C++/Java background 😅. But once I got comfortable with it, I've never looked back and now there's not a single project that I work on without it. I have a very React heavy portfolio and the four years I have been working on the frontend has also been on React and it's friends primarily.
I have worked with React's SSR frameworks like Gatsbyjs and Nextjs as well. Gatsby fascinated me more probably because of how it was marketed but it has a very steep learning curve and it took me a lot more time than it should have to understand it. But that could be a recurring theme with me when it comes to learning anything new 😅. Nextjs on the other hand was much more straightforward and therefore, enabled me to see it's benefits and make use of it's features much earlier.
I graduated from FAST-NUCES, Islamabad, Pakistan in 2018 with a degree in Computer Science and I still remember the reason why I chose this field. I loved designs and I wanted to become a graphic designer working for big organizations. I wanted to design assets like game characters and backgrounds that would later on be used in animations and stuff. Or at least, that's what I thought I'd be learning when I joined the university but turns out, not only I was never taught graphic design, the first week of my university I was thrown into the ugly Linux CLI with absolutely no knowledge of how to operate it. And we started running commands in it by just looking at the slides and following the instructor. I WAS HORRIFIED. I had zero interest in computer programming and so I cleared my first semester with a C- in Introduction to Programming course. But worse was yet to come when I failed Computer Programming course in the second semester and that's when I told myself I wasn't built for this. But my friends wouldn't let me leave and instead helped me learn C++ concepts since that's what we worked with in the earlier semesters. And I cleared the previously failed course with a B grade which was good enough for me.
Fast forward one year and all I knew was C++ and I knew it pretty well not gonna lie. But I found out soon that everyone was learning new things now. So, the shame started eating me up and one day I decided I was going to do something about it. So, I switched fields and took my first ever course on web development on Udemy. It was a simple code along for a single HTML/CSS page with very basic stuff inside it but I really felt something refreshing in there.
So this is where my journey as a web developer starts. Since then, I started taking online courses, reading books and building small projects of my own. After 2 years, in my university's final year project, I built an online SVG editor tool for the web with a friend where users could draw shapes, build animations and layer them and do all kinds of cool stuff that graphic designers do. You could say I bridged the gap between what I wanted to do when I joined the university (graphic designing) and what I was forced to do (computer programming) and I personally think this was the best thing that ever happened to me. It reminds me of a quote I read somewhere on LinkedIn (or perhaps it was Twitter):
Do what you love doing and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
Gotta say I have never heard and experienced a truer quote than this. So here's where I am today, I work on the frontend of the web primarily and React is my favorite thing these days. I am learning more about Linux CLI and GraphQL these days and I plan on moving to server side GraphQL with Apollo soon.
You will find me on most social media sites. I don't have a large following anywhere though but I'd love to connect with more people. if you think I am good fit, I can also work on your projects. You could even contact me if you're looking for some work. I have quite a few fun ideas in my backlog that I haven't been able to take time out for and I'd love to have someone build them for me.