My First Website!

So many hackathon applications ask for a personal website in addition to a GitHub and LinkedIn. I always thought developer portfolio websites were more for front-end developers, however after exploring for a bit and looking at other dev's beautiful portfolios, I figure this would be a cool opportunity.

I'm not much of a webdev, but of course in 2025, all you really need to know is how to describe what you want. I tried to use AI as sparingly as I could in order to develop my own skills, however it's usefulness cannot be denied; this website would've taken a lot longer without those assistants. The overall design of the website was completely of my own design; sometimes I needed AI to help with a prototype of some ideas.

Throughout the development of this site (which is still ongoing as of writing this), one thing I realized is that most things have been done already in the world of graphic design. It's more about how you put everything together that can make your website stand out against all the rest. The good thing about this is that there are multitudes of tutorials by talented developers online for amazing-looking elements! I'll always feel that following a tutorial more fulfilling than using AI to get what you want - it forces you to understand what every portion of the code does and how it affects the final product. It also makes it way easier to fine-tune the result.

During development, I was conflicted on including every flourish on this website. I didn't want the page to feel sluggish, or that I was trying to wow the reader with visuals rather than the substance. Go on any webdev community, whether it's Reddit, Twitter, Mastodon etc., it's clear that people, or at least other devs, are tired of browsing Next-based websites where they have to have every bit of text to fade in, a trailing cursor element, scrolling animations that include a small finger workout, and long loading times. This website is not completely absent of these, but I wanted to keep the site feeling snappy, and so I chose to forego and remove a lot of embellishments I had already implemented. I'm sure my tastes will change with time, and I'm sure I'll continue developing the design to reflect that!

Programming is a passion of mine, and I hope this website is enough to support that. Before finalizing my career as a software developer at university, I was also very into graphic design. I'm confident this experience can bring a unique perspective to any future prospects. Thanks for taking the time to read this post! If you're interested at all in whatever I say, or want to reach out for any reason, feel free to leave an email at the contact page, or directly at tfsteptoe@gmail.com.