I wrote this up pretty quickly in Svelte. Most of the time spent was adjusting to Flowbite and
tinkering to decide what ways I thought made the site feel good. I'm quite comfy with Svelte
and Tailwind so those parts took very little time. I honestly probably spent the most time on
the Home Page and trying to think of what to write for the contents of this and the Projects
Page. I also used VS Code as my editor which is a change from my usual WebStorm.
Home Page
I thought I'd have a little bit of fun with it and tap into my video gamey roots and
influences. It's got a little pizzaz but hopefully nothing too austentatious.
Projects Page
Initially, my Projects page was going to have a timeline-like flow (as it does now) but you
would mouse over the project to see the details. But this felt awkward and with potentially a
lot of information to display, it didn't feel like a popover was appropriate. I also didn't
want to crowd the page with a bunch of accordions and so ended up deciding to use a modal. I
also wasn't originally planning to make the legend act as filters, but felt like visitors
would want to click on them so I decided they might as well do something. I had already spent
the time thinking about it and executing it was not a complex lift. I primarily picked Flowbite
Svelte so that I would not have to build a timeline from scratch but I am not in love with the
component approach after implementing it. I think I might have had a better experience with
DaisyUI's implementation of a class-based timeline.
About Myself
Hi! My name is John Melvin III and I'm a Front end-Focused Web Developer, a self-taught
programmer, and I have been working in web development professionally for over 10 years.
While I am definitely capable of executing pixel-perfect designs and translating Figma to
production code, I often describe myself as loving the back of the front end. It may seem like
a straneg passion, but I love wiring up endpoints and transforming data into a user
experience. Perhaps it's that feeling of achievement getting that complex data from the API on
the screen and in a meaningful way.
When I'm not writing code, I'm probably playing video games (FFIXV being a big one), doing
TTRPG things, watching a show, or cooking (i.e. playing sous chef to my amazing wife). Or I'm
writing code to support those hobbies.
I started writing code in the early '90s. I was always curious about games and programming and
when my dad got a free copy of Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 with his CAD software, I cracked open the
C++ manual and started reading. I made it about as far as pointers which confused my 13
year-old self for a while. Then in highschool, my friend introduced me to Multi-User Dungeons
(MUDs). I started playing them with my dial-up modem connection and then I got interested in
writing code for them when I learned they were written in C. My very first code submission
still exists and was been reposted here in 2003. I also picked up VB 6.0 around this time and started learning HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript
when I started building pages on AOL Pages and Geocities. It wasn't until years after high school
that C# came out and I started learning it. It had the best of what I loved about C++ (typing and
syntax) with the ease of VB (at least with respect to building desktop applications and helper
methods).
Svelte , Tailwind CSS , and Flowbite Svelte