In elementary school, my sister introduced me to a browser game called Neopets. The main objective of the game was to take care of virtual creatures, but the most impactful feature was that it allowed users to personalize and share webpages in-game with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I ended up building sinful pages with lots of blue Comic Sans, absurdly loud auto-playing MIDI music, flashing background GIFs that probably triggered epileptic seizures, and seemingly endless stacks of alert dialog boxes that would “freeze” your computer and make your mom think you got a virus. (I apologize if you ever fell victim to my heinous pranks!) Despite the fact I was creating foolish webpages about my Neopets, the reality was that the game was introducing me to the very fabric of the web.

After I quit Neopets, I continued to learn web development through free online tutorials and books I couldn’t buy during visits to bookstores. These studies would then manifest as fan websites about other video games that intrigued me on free web hosting platforms like GeoCities.

In high school, my sister started her own neighborhood business as a dog walker and inspired me to try something similar. I ended up taking my web development hobby to the next step and established my own business as a freelance web designer and developer where I built websites for small, local businesses for several years.

For college, I moved to northern California to study computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Because I had been self-taught up until this point, it was here that I began to truly realize the scope and diversity in opportunities the field offered. I had been completely oblivious to computer science fundamentals, and I began to study topics that online tutorials never directed me to like data structure and algorithm analysis, assembly, computer architecture, and more. I also tried to step away from web programming to explore other specializations like graphics programming, network programming, game programming, virtual reality, and more. At the end of my studies, I realized that it made the most sense to come full circle and combine my formal education with my previous “street” coding experiences to find a job in Silicon Valley as a specialist in web technologies.

Since graduating and receiving my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science in 2015, I’ve been professionally building web applications for the Bay Area in a variety of industries including biotech, medical, on-demand services, and more. My education hasn’t stopped here though. Outside of work, I continue to learn and play with new technologies that often come up as open source experiments on my GitHub. Because I currently reside in South Bay, I occasionally take online or night classes at De Anza College where I study graphic and interactive design when I find extra time.