My journey in development started in 2004, at age 8, watching my dad build websites with raw PHP and experiment with this new thing called AJAX. He was our town's webmaster, and I was his apprentice. My first website had it all - falling snow in winter, a visitor counter, and the unmistakable charm of early 2000s web design.
By the age of 16, after building custom WordPress sites, I achieved what I thought was the ultimate symbol of success - buying my first MacBook. I still remember seeing people using them in coffee shops, thinking they made it in life.
The next decade was a mix of frontend work with React, backend adventures, and even a dive into mobile development with Flutter - all while studying or working full-time as a product manager. Each project taught me something valuable: the best technical decisions come from deeply understanding both the code and the developers who'll use it.
Today, this technical foundation helps me guide founders in building tools developers actually want to use.