My Personal Website

This website is a personal portfolio and outlet for my creative work, both professional, and personal. The website itself has been a large project for me as well; being my first real experience going through every stage of web development, from ideation, to production. It's been a big learning experience as well for me, being the first time I've comitted to using a framework (in this case, SvelteKit) for web development. I believe working through these new waters has been a great opportunity to learn and grow as a developer.

Remarks

As vibe-coded sites, no-code website builders, and templates have become more and more popular, I've found myself wondering where the benefit of 'doing things the old fashioned way' was. Although Svelte isn't exactly old fashioned, I feel that Svelte code is elementally very similar to writing websites in HTML/CSS. In fact, the first draft of this website was purely HTML and CSS.

As accessibility and reactive components became a priority, transitioning to Svelte was natural. I found that the best practices and patterns with Svelte development naturally reflected my experience with dynamic programming and object-oriented programming, though without unnecessary complexity those tend to bring.

While I believe AI/LLMs have a place in web development, I also believe they're nothing without intelligent human direction, creativity, and experience. I'm no stranger to vibe-coding tools, however I know that with other languages that I've nearly mastered (especially Lua/Luau) they often fail with fundamentals and strong practices; which is why, especially since I am still learning, I did everything by hand, referencing documentation, help forums, and practical examples. The flaws that may have arose as a result only make this site more human.

In the end, I think the work and learning involved in creating this website was beneficial to creating something responsive, functional, and representative of myself as a designer and creative. I'll likely continue to iterate and refine this website as I learn and grow, and be happy doing so.

Resources