To answer that question, first I want to mention why do I even bother writing. Being on the side of introversion at least till the beginning of 20s, lack of tendency to approach a conversation was always there. Unless I could sense an occasional comfort of really throwing those to the air, thoughts used to revolve around where they generated. Not sure exactly when, but I discovered I feel comfortable writing in the language of the Englishmen more than my native one. The thoughts inside, to turn those into letters I realised it actually feels good. I found out it is a satisfyingly good way of expressing myself. So it hit me with an instinct, I think I like to write.

Coming to writing blog posts, it was during the last Ramadan I was watching an episode of CS50 of Harvard by David J. Malan. I found the lesson interesting, so I started taking some notes. After a while it clicked me, why don’t I write it in a more organized way! I started intending it to be my version of short article realising if I write it in my way, it will be much easier to remember stuffs in the future. So, I completed my work. Then I thought if I post this online, I’ll try to learn and edit this more in a correct & in depth way to avoid humiliation. So, I decided to turn it into a Medium story.

However, this wasn’t the very first story on the platform. When I learnt how to run and compile SASS into CSS on my computer, I found the steps to be a little disturbing to remember. So, I thought of creating my own cheatsheet for the procedures. In that way I won’t have to google for it. It was then when I first thought of writing any blog or something. Besides, it felt cool then to have a Medium account with something to show on my profile 🥴. So I completed my first story. (BTW nobody does the work that way anymore. Or I should say EXACTLY THAT WAY).

Coming to real talks

I love to watch videos & podcasts on web technologies & development, specially the long conference videos. Alhamdulillah I find it really really necessary to boost my interest and morale. Watching conference talks on YouTube, I became a fan of Jake Archibald, Addy Osmani and other Google hotshots. After quite a long time, I came to know about someone named Dan Abramov. If you already know him I guess you understand why I titled him as "someone". At first he didn’t seem to me that of a developer rockstar to be honest. So, I didn’t bother stalking him that much. Days went on.., when I tried to know about React, again the name of Dan came to my recommendation. I started following him on twitter. Didn’t feel that cool this time too.

I started learning React after months. Oneday when I googled about react hooks, I found a video of him. I didn't watch the video but I felt it would be interesting to stalk his Medium profile and I did so. There I came to know, he shifted from Medium to his own personal blog. Honestly I was never a fan of pink, red or cheesy bright colors on websites. But I was simply blown away. How fast this guy's site is man! Never saw anything like that before!!! I read few of his posts. Then suddenly he seemed cool! This time I watched some of his interviews and talks of React Conference. I became a fan overnight.

I'd like to say Addy Osmani probably inspires me the most on the field of web development. If you're familiar you'd probably know how active he is on his own blog and other platforms. So, it reveals another reason why a latent desire to have one for myself kept growing. On January 1st, 2020 Dan published a post titled 'My Decade in Review'. Finishing with reading, I decided I need a website like this for myself anyhow and I need it as early as possible. Probably that day I planned to build my own blog. So, if I have to say who inspired me the most to build the site you’re currently reading on, it's Dan Abramov.

Let's build

On the last part of January 2020, I started building this site. I started making it absolutely from scratch. And I didn’t expect this to be that complex before starting. To share some of the stories of making, it's a static site built with Gatsby. The contents of the posts are all written in markdown files. I chose Gatsby over other tools becaue of its blazingly fast performance. I built the basic skeleton in 2-3 days. Coming to styling, I had no idea how to implement theme of a code snippet on a website. That was the first difficulty to face. It took me more than a day just to make it work properly. Then I tried to make the dark mode toggle. I knew I should use context api, but bugssssssss. It works on the home page but doesn’t work on the others, it works but doesn’t store user’s choice and so on. Again after one day of intense work it worked!

Everything was working pretty smooth on my machine, I was on the verge of being overwhelmed. But wait!! I tried to deploy it, and guess what now starts the magic again. It doesn’t work on the server! I became so upset I was literally devastated. It finally worked after so much, why doesn't it work on the server! Why this keeps happening again and again! I kept fixing and fixing but no luck. Then after some intense hours, praise be to Allah it finally worked perfectly.

Coming to the design, considering the ratio of audience, the main targeted platform was mobile devices. So, I tried to make it look more like a mobile app than a website. I wanted to keep it both neat and modern. I decided to mimic Dan's overreacted in some cases.

Final thoughts

So to recap, I find it comfortable and enjoying to express myself through writing. Other than that, I find it extremely useful to solidify existing knowledge on something alhamdulillah! I decided to build this despite having a platform like Medium to customize everything the way I want. And also to mention, the super fast navigation through out the site was the major goal to achieve. All praise be to Allah, I would like to thank Dan Abramov, Addy Osmani and John Smilga.

I’m happy for the way this turned out alhamdulillah. Happy to have a corner for myself in the universe of web.