Every developer has an origin story. Mine starts with a simple realization: the websites I used every day were built by people — and I could be one of them.
I started with React and Tailwind CSS because they gave me the fastest feedback loop. Write a component, see it render, break it, fix it. That loop was addictive. My first real project was AniSite — a platform for anime fans to explore and track their favorite shows and characters. It was ambitious for a beginner, which is exactly why it taught me so much.
After that came Gallery View, a real-time photo gallery that forced me to think about state updates and UI polish. Each project raised the bar a little: better layouts, cleaner code, more attention to how things feel, not just how they look.
Alongside personal projects, I enrolled in the Codepolitan course to strengthen my fundamentals and learn frameworks more seriously. The community there organized a collaborative project where members were split into teams. I ended up working under a team lead who blew me away — a Bangkit Academy graduate who had interned at one of Indonesia's biggest startups. I learned so much from him. We spent late nights debugging together, chasing errors that turned out to be embarrassingly simple. Those sessions taught me more about real-world development than any tutorial could.
Looking back, the frontend was never just about interfaces for me. It was about empathy — understanding what a user sees, where they get confused, and what makes an experience delightful. That mindset still shapes everything I build, even when I'm working on backend systems or smart contracts.