Photo by Teddy Kelley on Unsplash

Sometimes, my friends ask me how I got into front-end development. I would say I kinda stumbled into it; but the truth was, I didn’t really know. So last week, I made a deep dive into the dark corners of the Internet to dig up every front-end project I’ve worked on since I was 12.

And boy, was it a dive. 🤦

So here they are. Every terrible decision, every embarrassing website, every mistake and lesson learned that made me the front-end developer I am today. Here they are, in their full unfiltered glory.

(If you’re just starting out in front-end development, I have included nuggets of knowledge I’ve learned along the way that I hope will save you time in your journey. If you’re an old hand… I hope this story gives you a giggle or two 💁‍♂️)

12 years old

Let me set the scene. It was 2007. Steve Jobs had just introduced the iPhone. Everyone was using MSN Messenger. Nobody liked Windows Vista. These were things I remember, but I don’t remember when exactly I decided to make a website.

I liked the idea that something put on the web can be seen by anyone around the world, like magic. Surely it couldn’t be that hard. Could it?