👋 Hello! As this is my first post here in the community, I would like to make a personal introduction and share some context that explains how significant (for me) the achievement of this title is.

My Journey

I’ve been a web developer for 3 years. I started my journey in technology back in 2019 with C# and Unity (just like many other devs I’ve met personally). I joined a Digital Games course in 2020, but due to the pandemic, I had to drop out after finishing the first semester (and never returned). This time in college taught me the basics of programming logic, which was enough for me to later get an internship at a company that was studying how to migrate the stack from what was used at the time to Angular and .NET, and where I currently work as a Junior Developer.

The most important context for this post, to reflect how big the development of a simple website was (considering, of course, the 3 years of web development experience), is that during this time I’ve gone through various personal and professional setbacks, and I never really managed to do anything beyond what was done inside the company. I’m the second oldest developer in this new stack, and I’ve stood out several times internally by participating in initiatives, improving and spreading good coding standards, and working through and learning about all stages of software development, from the initial idea, visual prototypes, development, delivery, and maintenance at clients. Most of my colleagues who work closely with me already consider me a Mid-level developer, due to my good knowledge of how some processes work; I frequently help with doubts and am consulted for some decisions, despite still having my insecurities and being officially a Junior, haha.

Challenges

And even with all this experience, developing something outside the company seemed much harder, especially to keep the focus. I started several personal projects (most of the repositories are still on my GitHub, by the way) and never finished them because I lacked motivation. Despite all the benefits at my company, I felt completely stagnant, bored, and at times even incompetent.

These feelings were so strong that, combined with numerous personal life issues and stress, I almost lost my job in 2023 because my performance had dropped compared to what it once was. I believe that was the click I needed mentally, because earlier this year I managed to move to the city where the company is located (a part of the issues stemmed from the large distance between my old home and the company, since I had a hybrid contract), and with that, my performance picked up again. I led a training session for a team of 10 interns, where 9 stayed on and still work with me or nearby. The training went so well that shortly after, another batch of 5 interns joined, which I mentored, and the third group will begin tomorrow with 8 interns. This, along with other initiatives I’ve taken and interesting projects I’m involved in or even lead.

Throughout this difficult year, full of losses and extreme weather events, I finally found the courage and activated my strong determination (and stubbornness) for something positive: to improve as a developer and a professional.

New Beginnings

A few days ago, I achieved something that I had been postponing for a long time: I developed a personal website to showcase some of the knowledge I’ve gained over the years. It serves as a contact hub and a presentation of who I am and what I can (and will) do.

On a more technical side, I can mention a few points:

• I used Angular and Bootstrap as the base for the visual interface and responsive components.
• Responsiveness for mobile was also a huge learning curve, as we don’t have responsive projects at the company (yet, I have some ideas brewing), so this was something new that I learned and will never forget.
• I explored SEO practices such as optimizing meta tags and structuring content for search engines, something I hadn’t even considered before, unlike responsiveness, where I just hadn’t implemented it yet.
• When I measured the site quality with browser tools, I was extremely happy with the scores close to 100 for Accessibility, Performance, SEO, and Best Practices.
• I even thought about implementing unit tests and the possibility of installing it as a PWA (Progressive Web App), as I’ve been doing a lot of this at the company, but since it’s such a small project, I didn’t think it would really bring much benefit, just unnecessary complexity.

The URL of the project is here if you'd like to take a look: https://solturne.vercel.app

The repository is here as well, in case you'd prefer: https://github.com/S0lturn3/portfolio

If you get a chance to check it out, I’d be very happy to hear what you think! Any feedback, whether on the design, code, or even improvement ideas, will be extremely valuable.

Thanks for reading my story! I hope it can inspire someone to take the next step, just as this project helped me evolve. See you around! 🚀