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web foundations

Front-End Development Experiments

Early web work that connected embedded interfaces, PHP-backed pages, AngularJS, and the realization that user interfaces could be serious engineering surfaces.

The beginnings

My first experience with web development came from tinkering with the ESP8266 WiFi-enabled microcontroller. Before I knew what APIs were, my default interface with the microcontroller was a very simple website with a dialog and a dropdown that could turn one of its IO pins high or low and trigger an attached relay.

Later, I found a beginner PHP course and was surprised by how much could be done with server-side processing and persistent storage such as SQL. That became the first bridge between simple pages and actual data-backed tools.

Over time, I picked up a good chunk of HTML and CSS, but the biggest leap came during my Target internship. AngularJS made data binding and session-driven interfaces click in a way static pages had not.

Student of the web

This older site came from the same curiosity: how do strong websites feel polished, responsive, and useful? At the time, the answer felt like a combination of careful CSS, JavaScript, and a willingness to keep iterating on the interface.

A website for my dad's trucking company.
A PHP endpoint used to feed current weather information to a site.