Who is this?
My name is Niklas, a developer from Umeå, Sweden. At the time of writing, I am working as a frontend developer at ComeOn Group where I am a part of a team that is working with Sportsbook applications (Sports betting). Building web-stuff is a genuine interest of mine, so I like tinkering with projects even on my free time. You can see some of them on my GitHub profile!
My origin story
I am a self-taught developer. I had always been curious about "web design" - I did actually take a course in it in school but nothing really came of it. The teacher wasn't really that good, and neither was the curriculum. Fast-forward about ~7 years and I stumbled on to a Reddit post asking what people wanted to achieve in the upcoming year. In one of the comments someone said they wanted to learn to code, and it got a reply with a bunch of helpful links. One of them would prove to be the start of my career.
Codecademy. It had a free, interactive and easy to use interface to learn the basics of HTML and CSS. I went through the relatively short free course with relative ease (I did actually remember some stuff from my web design course in school 😏). But I wanted more. Much more. It was so fun just making the most basic pages and styling them! I surrounded myself with as much content and resources as I possibly could (I tend to do this when I find any new interest) and doing my best to pick up as much knowledge as I possibly could.
All of this was happening while I was working another full-time job in a local warehouse in town. It was a very relaxed job, mostly monitoring stuff with the help of a computer. I had a lot of time over for other things, so what I started bringing my laptop to work and used my free time between work tasks to pick up where I left off before I went to work. I just couldn't get enough. At first I didn't think I would be able to get to an "employable level", I just thought it would be cool to maybe be able to do some websites as a hobby and get some extra cash. But as time went by and I started to gain a little bit more confidence it started to realise that this was actually something I could do full time. I decided that I would make one final project that I would be able to show to an employer and showcase my skills. It is a fullstack recipe app written in the MERN-stack. To this day I am still proud of it (even though I think the code sucks) because of what I managed to create without any outside help, no mentor or anything like that.
I can't say what actually landed me the interview for my current job. Maybe it was my project, maybe it was my attitude and motivation or maybe I was just really lucky. Perhaps a combination of all of them. Nevertheless, I got the interview - and I got the job!
Okay, that's cool and all - but why are you doing this?
I do not expect anyone to read this blog. I am not really expecting anyone to visit my website, really. I am not doing this for anyone but me. My plan for this blog is to have a place to document different things I am learning about, and be able to look back at them. The website will also serve as my own playground to try out new technologies, libraries or whatever it might be. And if I someday reach a point where someone else would actually care to read my blog - well that would be amazing! 🎉 I think it would be my end-goal to be able to give something back to the community, as so many content creators have done for me through the years.
That's a wrap! My first blog post.