Hello World

Hello world!

When starting to learn a new programming language, it’s a custom for developers to write a piece of code that outputs “hello world” (and immediately jump on the mandatory TODO MVC example!). So above, you are witnessing my “Hello world” in the writing world! 🎉

A few words about me

All my life, I’ve been a mix of geekiness and outgoingness. I’ve always liked socializing, and public speaking was something that I enjoyed (weird, I know), but at the same time, I was always playing with my Lego sets and tinkering with computer programs and games.

It’s been 18 years since I wrote my first Hello World in a programming language (it was in C++!), and for the last 10 years, I’ve been doing this professionally and had the privilege to be part of some exciting projects used by millions of users worldwide ranging from gaming to e-government and circular economy!

Now, why haven’t I done this before? It was a mixture of things. It was mainly a lack of prioritization, not trusting my writing skills enough (I was always acing the maths test, not the literature or grammar ones 🙂), dealing with imposter syndrome, and a fear of being criticized. But while taking a well-deserved extended break from working after my last contract, I decided that this is the time to do it. Also, what’s a better way to overcome your fears than tackling them head-on?! And to top it off, I also balanced this by consciously not adding a commenting system; hey, my place, my rules, right? (there are still several ways of saying hi and maybe even getting into juicy debates over what I write here.)

I’m excited about where this journey will lead me while sharing what I experience and learn.

What to expect

Starting from the launch of this website, I plan to write an article every month. (fingers crossed! 🤞)

I will mainly write about tech (specifically web development), teamwork, education, and leadership/followership.

I chose these topics because they interest me and I have direct experience with but also because these are areas where I want to continue expanding my knowledge. Writing and researching for it is an excellent way of doing that.

Under the hood

Well, I hope you didn’t think I wouldn’t add anything technical to this, right?! It is a “Hello world” after all.

As the footer boldly says, this website is brought by Astro and developed by these two hands that are also typing this article.

Why Astro? I wanted something fast that supports Markdown files for blogging while at the same time learning something new. Interestingly enough, initially, I went with Gatsby, but its less-than-ideal DX hit me, and I was also taken aback by how many reports of how bad its scales were out there. (yeah, I was already envisioning this blog with 1000s of entries; Tolkien-volume of writing, here I come!) During that time, Astro was generating quite a buzz in tech Twitter, so I decided to give it a go. As a developer, I value performance and simplicity a lot. Although adjusting to the Astro paradigm took a bit, I enjoyed coding this website while sticking to the basics.

The result is a bunch of static pages served from a CDN - simple, elegant, and performant. You can check here for a more detailed presentation of the stack and tools used.

That’s all folks ✌️

That’s all for today! Thanks for reaching the end of the article, and I hope you will return for the next one. Until then, feel free to drop a line here.

Until next time! Vladimir

References

• Astro docs
• Hello world history