My first computer was a Tandy PC.
On it was programs like Microsoft’s Creative Writer, Creative Artist, and Broderbund’s Kid Pix, which I used to generate weird little stories about princesses that lived in cities instead of enchanted woods and collages of disorganized rainbows and clipart.
Then I learned about the Internet.
It was a magical place where I can learn anything (I was a fan of the library too). I did two things when we finally got dial-up in our house: explore the seedy underbelly of the internet (warez chatrooms and 2600 usenet boards to learn about phreaking and hacking) and stake my claim. I created two fan-sites, one for Star Wars, one for Spider-man.
During high school, I read about “blogging” in the newspaper. It seemed cool so I reated my own blog on Pitas. I didn’t like the way it looked, so I changed it. I taught myself HTML/CSS because I wasn’t satisifed with templates created by other people.My sites were personal and wouldn’t feel like mine if I used other people’s designs, etc. Besides, I had fun learning how to code and seeing it suddenly render on the screen. Code became a means of expression for me. Creating for the web also meant that I was able to share what I had created.
And here we are.
Nowadays, I am a full-stack web developer, writing mostly JavaScript. Besides web technologies, I am interested in how code can be an artistic medium.