As You can see in couple places on this website that I’m calling myself a web crafter.

What the hell?

With time goes experience

I’m making various things on the web since early 2005 (comercially it’s 2009).
When I started, iframes and <marquee> tags were the thing (a.k.a. hype). Whole pages were built on table grids and inline styles were not that bad (and how current history shows it really isn’t - see some react-based projects :P ).

Time has passed and I’ve learned about cascade styling sheets and incoming new, HTML(5) standards. Most of my early projects were based on slicing Photoshop’s psd files to static templates.
Then I started learning about Wordpress theming and deploying everything to remote servers. I’ve become a full-stack developer :D

In 2011 I’ve learnt about Ruby programming language and Rails - a web framework for Ruby. I was trying to switch to backend development exclusively. After 2 years of working in RoR, I’ve decided to come back to frontend - mostly because it was the thing that gives me more fun.

Luckily, Node.js has become more and more popular, so as long I was happy with programming in javascript I’ve decided to give it a try.

Since 2013 - apart from freelancing - I was developing mini side project using only javascript (and a little bit of Ruby sometimes).
Unfortunately (or maybe not?) all those projects were eventually deployed into bottom of my drawer in the end;)

I was really afraid of showing my code to public. But even if I never deployed anything to production at that time, experience that I’ve gained during all those years is priceless. In my opinion, every programmer should develop his/her skills apart from full-time job. It opens Your mind to new solutions and in the end makes You a better developer.

And remember, a good developer is not necessary a person, whom code is like highest state of art, but who is

Getting the shit done

Yeah, that’s right. Who cares that Your code has 100% code coverage but no business value? That doesn’t mean of course that You shouldn’t care about its quality. But as long You don’t have to (for example when You are making Your very own side-project) You don’t need to bahave like an evangelist.
Most of side projects dies in the baby-steps stage, because of the burning out effect.

Your eeny meeny little project don’t have to be perfect.

Just ship something.

And then collect all the satisfaction and remember: don’t be afraid about public response. If Your project solves YOUR problem then YOU are the one who can state an opinion about it.

F_ck all the haters, but…

There will be always some group of people with generally negative attitude (a.k.a. douchebags), but listen peacefully to kind people who are giving You advices and show ways to improve. Sometimes You just can miss something.
Let me give You a real-life example: at the moment of writing this article I’ve already decided to mark current state of Rakun.js with 0.1.0 version signature and soon release next update without backward compatibility.
Why’s that? Because thanks to community I’ve obtained some very useful tips, that will improve Rakun.js performance and remove some antipatterns from current code.

And about that web crafter…

Around 2010, IT community were crazy about giving fancy job titles for themselves, such as agile-world-class-coach, social-media-ninja or super-turtle-of-front-end-development. That period of time had more random hackers than whole computer history in total.

Time has passed, and so that trend. Nowadays most people programmers go with backend/frontend/full-stack/specific-language developer title.
I’m a bit nostalgic person (8-bit game graphics FTW!) so I wanted just to remind about that crazy events from the past :)

But maybe that’s not only about this; since the last year I really struggle about self-categorization about what I’m doing: from creating stylesheets for static websites, through creating mobile apps using cordova/phonegap and ending on full-stack development with Node.js/Express.js on the backend and Rakun.js on the frontend.

Or all this is just about that jack-of-all-trades doesn’t sound THAT cool :)

And You? What’s Your job title? I’d love to hear about what are You doing.

Best,

– ł.