A long, long time ago, in this galaxy, there was a girl who enjoyed writing updates about the high school news. She used an editor known as Adobe PageMill, and she made sure people knew what was going on. A few months into that adventure, a guy showed up at the afterschool club and asked her why she was using PageMill and why she wasn’t writing HTML. She learned HTML and fell in love with programming even more – after seeing what she could do with Applesoft Basic years earlier and now seeing what she could do with HTML on “the web”, she knew this would end up going somewhere.
Fast forward about 27 years later, she’s writing courses on architecture and identity. She helps maintain sites and blogs that talk about software architecture and software development. She gets to educate people on more advanced topics in tech. Yet, there’s something that has felt like it’s been missing for awhile.
That “she” is me, and as I look back at all I’ve done, I’ve realized that there’s a missing piece. I’ve been working in the .NET realm for quite a long time. I wrote a data bootcamp with roots in Python. I had a client in the PHP space within the past few years. I’ve picked up a Ruby project for one of my community adventures. I do deal with some Javascript due to site maintenance, but I don’t feel like my knowledge of Javascript has grown as much as I’ve wanted it too. What about HTML and CSS?
Personally, 2025 will be the year of the front-end for me. I want to get back into HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I want to learn about their modern adventures – especially things like HTMX, Tailwind, and web components. I want to brush up my React skills, and I might come around to Angular. (I liked AngularJS, and I was bitter about the TypeScript stuff.) I’m happier when I get to work with the front-end. That’s where the user experience really comes in handy. That’s where I truly find joy!
Rest assured, you’ll still see me doing the software architecture and software development stuff. That’s part of what I do for work. And I still have a couple more courses planned for this year that I am super excited about! So if you want to keep up with me on those, be sure to check out NimblePros Academy and the NimblePros blog.
In my personal blog, though, expect to see me playing with the front-end technologies and demystifying how they work, especially with their backend server components.