Abdelkader :3

I’m Abdelkader. The first time software really caught my attention was watching my older brother work in Unity. I’d stand behind him and watch him type for a while, and then somehow things on the screen would start moving around and responding. I didn’t fully get it, but I was completely into it.

I started using Unity myself when I was 13 and made a bunch of small games. Most of them were bad, honestly, but I loved doing it anyway. There was something really fun about making things move, break, and slowly come together. After a while though, I realized making a full, polished game on your own is kind of brutal. You need to do everything — code, art, sound, design, all of it — and I was very obviously not built for that life.

That’s around when I started drifting toward web development. Funny enough, I actually started with Flutter before the usual HTML, CSS, and JavaScript path. After that I got deeper into the fundamentals, then gradually into more serious stuff like Next.js, Node, and full-stack development in general. Somewhere along the way, design became a big part of it too. I liked that I could build something faster, shape how it looked and felt, and have people actually use it.

I’ve been doing that for around five years now. I started working professionally at 17, got my first client, was nervous the whole time, and then just kept going. Since then I’ve worked on websites, apps, interfaces, and all the in-between parts that make digital products feel good to use.

Most days, outside of work, I’m usually doing some combination of coding, designing, playing chess, reading, or drawing. I like making things, I like learning how they work, and I like getting the details right.