I grew up
online.

The Spark.

1995. A computer in the house for the first time. Windows 95. MS-DOS. A feeling that something enormous had just walked into my life.

I remember sitting in front of that screen and feeling like I was talking to the future. I didn't know what it was yet. But I knew I had to keep going.

Hello, World.

The web. HTML 4. Geocities. ICQ. The whole internet felt like a playground with no fences — you could build anything, talk to anyone, be anyone.

Lycos was my search engine. Yahoo Chat rooms were entire universes. My first website had animated GIFs, tiled backgrounds, and a visitor counter. It was magnificent.

The first time I made a webpage appear in a browser, I felt like a wizard. I still feel that way sometimes.

Forums & Communities

The web grew from static pages into living communities. phpBB and vBulletin forums were where real conversations happened — before social media swallowed everything whole.

I built forums, managed communities, customized themes. WordPress was becoming the engine of the web. I learned the internet wasn't just a place to read — it was a place to build.

Becoming a Builder

Laravel changed how I thought about web applications — clean, expressive, elegant. I built real products. Real things that real people used every single day.

Then Angular came along and JavaScript stopped being a toy. REST APIs, SPAs, the whole modern web stack clicked into place. The web was growing up. So was I.

There's something magical about building something from nothing and watching people actually use it.

React & Modern Web

React was everywhere — and for good reason. Component thinking, declarative UI, a whole new way of architecting interfaces. I built a lot. I learned a lot.

But over time, a tension grew. The web had become very complex, very heavy. Something was pulling me toward something simpler. Something more mine. More free.