Hello World!

My First Website

I made my first website in 7th grade (my freshman year) utilizing React Native. It was through this experience I was able to self learn how to utilize React Native to create my own personal website. While I tried finding a picture of my old website, it seems to have been lost in the void in my computer. I also tried looking for the code in my github profile, but it seems that I may have not initialized a repository for it. 😔 Anyways, it was through this project that got me interested into software development, more specifically being able to turn raw code into something that I could see. One of the main reasons why I created this website was to store some of the projects that I have been working on in the past and also to illustrate the set of skills that I had.

Wanted a Change

After a couple of years, the website looked a bit dry and dull. If I recall correctly, my first website contained just simple text and simple shapes to create a “futuristic website.” I also wanted to add pages which my old website was not capable of doing as it was just a single page. It was through this wanting of to change my website where I decided to redesign a completely new website. This website was mainly inspired by valorant, which had a futurustic theme to it.

Making this website gave me the experience in learning how to utilize certain libraries such as react router which allows the user to switch pages seemlessly without the need to refresh the page. While I still believe that this website is “futuristic,” as I started college I realized that this website was a bit unprofessional and also wasn’t sending any messages across. The attention span of a viewer is low and having a too complicated website could worsen my retention rate. These were just some of the reasons why I wanted to change my website.

A New Change Beginning of College

In attempts to make a professional website, I wanted something that would last me long. Something that would last me for years. In attempts of making a website that fulfill all of my needs, I was inspired by a computer science professor. Some people may know him as Professor Malan or some may know him through CS50, one of the biggest free courses available to the public. I took his CS50 course back in 7th grade and I learned a lot. But despite this, I also got inspiration from Allen Chang, a USC alumni who had a very cool website that he coded himself which you should check out. Through the combination of these two, I designed a website like this.

I still love this website. However, one thing that was not practical was having the time to maintain the website with all the dependencies and keeping the website running up to date for years to come. In addition, I found so many nice open source repositories which allow you to use markdown to create pages like this. That single feature attracted me to utilize an open sourced website template.

Don’t get my wrong, I love making websites but the amount of times I’ve been like “I could do better” has always inspired me to change the format of my website. Sometimes I like to think of this like my journey in Computer Science. I’m always trying to do better to find a “page” in my life that fits me. Hopefully this website lasts longer than my old ones.