About

Hello and welcome!

If you want to know more about me, you’re better served by the homepage.

If you want to know more about this website specifically, well, you’re in the right place!

The Purpose

This site counts as a “blogfolio”, a showcase of what I can do for work, but also of what I do for fun and non-profit 😄

It should entice people to watch my videos, instill confidence I can walk the walk besides talking the talk. It should encourage you to reach out for a collaboration or mentoring!

It’s not supposed to be overly serious, but it does contain a couple technical posts people keeping linking back to. And it is, itself, a seriously-made, modern, web app, optimised for a fun and fruitful user experience.

The common consensus is against creating your own portfolio website to fill out your CV. But there’s nothing against creating one when you do have a decent CV!

Besides, larger projects are truly collaborative, and I don’t stick around companies for too long. So, it’d be quite silly of me to say “if you want to see a Next.js app I worked on, check out Zoopla!”

It’s technically correct, the best kind of correct, but with this website, it’s clear that: if it’s got a feature, I’ve personally worked to implement it, solo 🙌 If it’s unique enough, I may even have a tutorial about it!

Plus, much like “real” projects, I don’t quite have a carte-blanche to do anything I want here: There’s awkward requirements! I don’t blog often, but some of my posts have gone relatively viral. Therefore, I should ensure noone’s left with broken links! Which means how I structure my routes needs to stay consistent, and I need to keep my MDX support!

My analytics are public so you can see we’re not Zoopla by a longshot, but there is a decent amount of people dropping by 👋

The Stack

The code is open-source and free on GitHub, you’re welcome to peruse it! It’s got details on the specific stack I went with to make this site tick.

I always keep my unpaid projects open-source and free, and have even done so for some of my paid work! And I always advise for being inspired by my methods, but against blindly copying everything wholesale.

That’s because I think that’s neither the best way to learn, nor likely to impress anyone looking at your portfolio / CV. The interviewers will know 😛 If you copy everything regardless, as people have done in the past... fair enough! That’s one of the points of open-source 😄

Next.js vs SvelteKit

Given I’ve amassed quite a few SvelteKit tutorials by now, you may be wondering... Why is this site Next.js?!

Next.js & SvelteKit are my two meta frameworks of choice at the moment. I most often use SvelteKit in my video tutorials, as I find Svelte closer to vanilla HTML, CSS & Javascript. This means it’s easier to showcase fundamentals with it.

I most often use Next.js for paid work, as it’s got the unfair advantage of... React 😂.

I may be experiencing a bit of “React Fatigue”, but the bigger companies I work with love targeting the much larger pool of React engineers. Plus, React got mega-popular way before Svelte even existed, so we’re at the point where there’s legacy codebases in React! It’s way more likely for a bigger company to have React apps they’d want my consultancy on, than Svelte apps.

In any case, the point is: I should have at least two core personal projects I update regularly, one for each of my favoured meta frameworks! Lo and behold, Johnnify is SvelteKit and this app is Next.js!

The tech world moves fast, especially the Javascript scene... I think my livestreams, and my core projects with real users & requirements have helped me stay current!

After all, it’s not everyday you get a greenfield contract, and even then there’s always a “novelty budget”: it’s a bad idea to cram everything that’s new since your last project!

Reaching out

There is one more secret weapon helping me stay current: you 🤗

I still read & reply to every single YouTube comment. They are a great resource for validation that I’m at least helping someone or leading some discussion, but also a fountain of suggestions and ideas!

So, please, feel free to comment on any video that strikes your fancy, or reach out through the socials in the footer. Some have a higher likelihood of a faster reply than others 😅

And, of course: thanks a bunch for reading! 🤙