projectstory

The Start of a Blog

A brief description of who I am and why I'm here

I’ve never felt a strong desire to put my thoughts on the internet, so I can't honestly say I would have ever imagined myself creating a blog. I mean, since the creation of my social media accounts around ten years ago, I’ve probably made less than a dozen posts. And yet here I am, intentionally writing words to share on the internet. So, with that, welcome to the start of my blog.

A Brief Introduction

Before we continue, let me introduce myself. My name is Trentin, and I'm a fullstack software engineer. I primarily work in the JavaScript programming language these days, building web applications using React.

While programming and software engineering is what I do, I can't say they encompass what I'm passionate about. My passions exist in building cool things and in learning, which in turn is the reason I love to code. The world of programming gives me a near-infinite amount of things to learn and provides a fun medium through which I can build cool things (like this blog 😎).

I also can't say that engineering encompasses my entire life, and my passion for learning usually manifests itself through me digging into new hobbies, ideas, and fields of study. There are so many things I find fascinating and I love the learning tangents I often find myself in the middle of and the ways that the things I learn on those tangents can be applied to other areas of my life.

So, Why Start A Blog?

While I haven't been an avid internet poster in the past, recently I've been inspired by a couple of bloggers and other content creators that have made me rethink what it means to share content on the internet. Before I don't think I saw content creation as a tool, but rather a distraction. However, the more I observe the work and the careers of others that I admire, the more I realize how vitally important it is to be sharing my work on the internet, which leads me to a few of the primary reasons for starting this blog:

It Provides A Space To Document My Projects

Recently, I have found myself spending a lot more time coding and building things in my free time. And the more I do this, the more I realize how much I do not know and how difficult it is to build things from the ground up. However, as I've begun documenting my process, I find that I am learning the paradigms and methods of building software much faster, and feel that it would be beneficial to do this in a public space (such as the internet) for a couple of reasons.

  1. It will hold me accountable to better understand the tools, technologies, and methodologies I use while building software.
  2. It will provide an easily accessible space I can always revisit when I encounter solutions to problems I have already faced in the past.
  3. I appreciate when creators share insights into their creative process (whether it be a software creation or something else) and would love to provide that to others.

To Find My Voice, I Need To Use It

As Austin Kleon states in his book Show Your Work - “Talk about the things you love. Your voice will follow”. So, in addition to having a space to document the creation of the projects I am building, I also wanted to create a space for myself where I can talk about the things I love so that I can find and develop my voice in this noisy social media world.

I Want To Teach What I Learn

It has been infinitely valuable to me that others share their knowledge on the internet. I have learned significantly more on the internet for free (or at least for very cheap) than I did from my time in the traditional education system. So, as I continue to build and learn new things, I want to have a space where I can share what I am learning. If I can contribute to another person's journey, even in the smallest way, then writing words on this website will be infinitely worth it.

The Vision For The Future

With all of that, here is my vision for this blog moving forward and a bit of what kind of content you can expect from me:

  1. Project Posts: As I work on side projects, I will post about some of the challenges overcome and things learned. These may come in the form of short snippets of code I find helpful, or a tutorial covering some topic I found challenging.
  2. Project Story Posts: I always find it interesting why people build the things they build rather than just the how. So I plan on posting some backstory around the projects I build as well. This post is an example of this category.
  3. Technical Tutorials: I also want to provide comprehensive overviews of the technologies I use often and know well in hopes that it can help others solve the challenges they are facing, or get up and running with new technologies quickly.
  4. Thoughts, Ideas, and Opinions: Thoughts, ideas, and opinions around (probably) mostly technical topics, but I am sure there will be some non-technical stuff too (remember, I'm almost always on some learning tangent).

Yeah, I know, it is a pretty broad range of topics. But I want this blog to represent me and the things I love, which is a lot. I am excited to be embarking on this journey with you all and hope you enjoy your time in my small corner of the internet.

Inspiration

This blog would not exist if it weren't for the content creators whose content inspired its creation, so it only feels right to give them credit. Here is a list of those who greatly influenced me to be here: