Then

How I Used To Work

Before this phase, I was an eat-whatever-was-on-the-plate dev.

Mostly frontend. I loved the hard UI problems. The weird interaction edge cases. The intricate JavaScript. The kind of bug that only shows up on one machine, after seventeen clicks, when the moon is full.

I liked the struggle. I liked the learning. I liked finally catching the thing.

JavaScript and TypeScript were home. I also liked Ruby and Python. Even PHP, yes. If it solved the problem, I was in.

What changed is not that I stopped caring about code. It is that the horizon expanded.

What I loved

  • Hard UI constraints and interaction polish
  • Getting deep into JavaScript behavior
  • Debugging the bug nobody else wanted
  • Learning by breaking things and fixing them properly

Languages I liked

JavaScript and TypeScript did most of the heavy lifting. Ruby and Python were always fun to work in. PHP too, when the job called for it. I was never very ideological about language.

I still am not. I just care about the level I am solving at now.

What carried over

The habits that still matter: curiosity, debugging discipline, pattern recognition, and enough respect for complexity to know when a “simple” change is not simple.

The tools changed. The instincts stayed.