Building a website from scratch

783 words

Gardening is therapeutic for so many people. My Great Granny always said that you're never closer to God than in the garden. I don't have a garden because I live in a flat block but I do have this website. It's nice to have something to tweak and build and play with that others can come and look at.

This is my real garden. It doesn't need any maintenance but it's pretty nice to make it look better, and fill it with more stuff. Like with a real garden, the stakes are pretty low. People can come to see it if they want, and either go "nice one" or "not my cup of tea", and as long as you're happy with it that's all that really matters. Also like a real garden, it's semi-private and completely your domain. You can have a fun play area, show off your best work, and even build a little nook just for you. My website has a digital shed where I make things like these blog posts.

Have something to mess about with

Not everyone needs a website. When you're a software developer it's often a good idea to have one as a landing board when people look you up. The most obvious reason to have a website is to act as a portfolio and to impress recruiters when you're looking for a job. I'm not looking for a job, so why would I make one?

This website is a way for me to improve front-end web development. I don't spend much time doing front-end web dev as there's a lot of great talent at work who can do front-end while I sort out the APIs and backend, scoping etc. That being said, it's good practice to be able to do the stuff that you're reviewing on pull requests, to put it mildly.

if you're sure you could do it better, prove it

I'm also not an exceptionally gifted graphic designer. I feel like know good when I see it, but I don't seem to be able to come up with a beautiful design first time round, or second time round, making me think that making a good website is an NP-hard problem. I'm a "Use LaTeX, get the info from A to B, let it sort the visuals for you move on" person, but I see the value in spending a bit of time to make things look nice. I can get into the mindset of a user and think "does this really look good?". On more than one occasion I've completely redesigned the layout of the website after having a bit of time to look objectively at it and decide it needs to be better.

Why have something to mess around with?

I've spent a lot of time this year being bummed out with personal stuff, and knowing that I can do this and get better at it shows I can grow and develop myself in different ways. Building a website is one of the ways I'm 'sigma-ing' myself (the sigma male thing is obviously a meme but the principles of self-improvement are something to reach towards when you're looking for focus).

I've also been able to better understand what I've done in a rush when I can take my time and mess around on my own, as well as develop new ways in which we can make things better. Just on developing this website I've come up with and found better ways to manage:

• The way we handle and display images with Next.js
• What tools/packages will make our lives easier
• How we structure files and code
• Using styled components in new ways

A lot of these are hard to justify spending time on when you're in a rush, but when you're doing something just for you and you want to do it right you can spend a little time working out how to do it on a smaller pr

It's often hard to justify spending a bunch of time doing research etc when you really have to get things done right now, but when you're building things to last and you can give yourself a bit of time you can learn new ways of understanding on a smaller project that you can apply to all future work. It's a great feeling.

Recap

I make this site as a release, to get better at making sites, and to make myself better at my job in general. Having my own little thing to work on is really satisfying and I can relate to people who have their own projects, whether software or not. Making this is just dissimilar enough to not feel like I'm just working more, but similar enough to be stimulating and be an actual fun creative outlet that can end up benefitting me long term. Happy days.