"Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet."
Douglas Adams

Computers became a passion for me since I got a ZX Spectrum as a kid, which doesn't mean I'm very good with them, but exploring their huge potential is a thing I've enjoyed doing for some decades now. The same thing goes for the internet. For me, network technologies started with a 2400 baud modem and bulletin board systems before the web eventually became a thing in my country of Portugal. And in general, I've always liked to turn ideas into code, draw or record things on a computer, make or play games... creating things seemingly out of nothing.

I enjoy web development in particular because of the relative immediacy of it. Anyone can make a website and everyone can open it, or at least that's the underlying promise of it. Professionally, I've worked off and on in the field and eventually settled on developing hybrid mobile apps, back-end services and content management systems. So far, these have been mainly for events and education, domains where rich content is king and assumptions are validated quickly.

Like many programmers who don't write blogs, I build the best solutions I can out of legacy PHP and Javascript code-bases and, although I work in a team, we tend towards solo-dev workflows. I don't see a lot of people like me publishing their experiences and thoughts online, although that is to be expected. We don't work with shiny new tech, we don't have any old nuggets of wisdom to share and we don't speak for people who are just starting out. I write this blog both because I have trouble finding others who would put together words from experiences like mine and because I know writing helps me think and learn. And I love to learn new things, that's one of the best (and sometimes worst) parts of web development, there's always something useful that you may thrive to master.

I work in a small company called Shake It. You won't necessarily find a lot of specifics from my job here because we do a lot of client work that involves different degrees of confidentiality. We usually have about two degrees of separation between ourselves and the end user (so we work for the people who work for the people who work for the people who work for the end user). This is another common premise that is naturally under-represented in online discourse. The usual challenge is in keeping the focus on delivering the best experience possible to the end user while there are at least two other stakeholders that need to shape that experience to account for their own best interests. You can find out more about our company at https://shakeit.pt

Finally, if you follow me on Twitter, you will notice that I'm from a time where the internet was more about the many interests people care about and not as focused on the people themselves. I only tweet about technology and, for other things, I may have other accounts. My other interests include making music and designing tabletop games. I appreciate your own interest in this blog and I hope you will find something of value to you in these pages. Thank you for reading.

Ricardo Tavares