Hello world - my journey so far

Oct 20, 2024

Jits

Note

Update — Mar 2025: since writing this post I’ve had a change of heart in what I want to do with my career — I miss working in a highly collaborative and mission-driven team of nice people. So I’ve decided to look for a full-time role where I can bring my experience and expertise to this team environment.

Perhaps one day I’ll get back to working full-time on my own products, but for now I’m excited to see where this new chapter takes me. I’m still very passionate about driving full-stack web development forward. I’ll still be writing here, sharing my thoughts and learnings, and building things in my spare time.

As soon as I got my first computer — a 486 — I was hooked. I knew then I wanted to build software, and eventually run my own business where I (hopefully) get to build things I want to see in the world.

Fast-forward about 25+ years, with almost two decades of product focused full-stack experience under my belt, I feel this even more strongly.

So, I’m on a mission to build products and services I want to see in the world, and share my thoughts, learnings and expertise with others.

Especially as I’ve benefited enormously from the generosity of others who’ve shared their knowledge and experience. Not to mention the entire open-source ecosystem, without which I couldn’t do what I do.

As is the fashion again… it’s about time I started a blog!

Here I will share my adventures in software development and building indie products, with care, curiosity and understanding. I’ll aim to share some longer-form writing, what I’m reading, and updates on what I’m building, focused on the software development and product building side of things, with a sprinkle of personal development, productivity and running an indie business (from the perspective of a software developer).

My experience

I’ve led and worked on many projects, often taking them from 0 to 1, across multiple domains and industries. These include: consumer products, tools for scientists, a PaaS, data registries, portals, internal tools, mobile game servers, etc.

I’ve seen over two decades worth of technologies and development practices come and go.

I’ve worked with: Ruby, Rails, TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, Astro, Angular, RxJS, VueJS, Nuxt, Scala, Java, Cloudflare, Supabase, Firebase, Google Cloud, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis, various CMSes, and so on.

I believe strongly that this varied experience and plurality of skills, over many years, has helped me become a well-rounded and adaptable software developer, with a strong focus on product development and delivering high quality working software.

Part of the fun of being in this field is exploring all the options and permutations. It’s daunting, but fulfilling. One of my goals is to make it easier for other developers to navigate full-stack web development and find joy 😌

What I’m currently working on

My aim is to build focused products I want to see in the world — tools for learning, productivity and self expression, and knowledge products to share learnings and expertise.

I also give personalised mentoring, coaching and technical training through my TidyBrains Mentoring and TidyBrains Training services.

In the next post I’ll talk more about what I’m currently working on for the rest of the year and beyond.

What I'm working on - Oct 2024