From Monolith to Microservices: A Student’s Journey with Node.jsFor my final software architecture course, we had to build a small e-commerce application. Like most students, I started by building a “monolith.” All my code—user authentication, product catalog, and order processing—was in a single Node.js Express application, connected to a single database. It worked, and it was simple to get started. But then, the requirements started getting more complex. A change to the order processing log... Read article

Leveling Up in React: My Journey with Advanced HooksFor the first few months of learning React, I lived in a comfortable world defined by two hooks: useState and useEffect. They were my hammer and screwdriver, and I used them for everything. But as the application for my capstone project grew, I started hitting walls. My state logic became a tangled mess, components were re-rendering for no reason, and I was repeating the same patterns over and over. This forced me to venture beyond the basic... Read article

My TypeScript ‘Aha!’ Moments: Best Practices I Learned on a Real ProjectI just spent a semester wrestling with a pretty complex web application for my software engineering course. We chose TypeScript from the start, thinking it would magically prevent all bugs. It didn’t. But what it did do was force us to be better engineers. Along the way, I had a few “aha!” moments—things that, once they clicked, completely changed how I write code. Here are the big ones. Lesson 1: Your tsconfig.json is Yo... Read article

My App Was Working, But It Was Slow: A Student’s Guide to Web PerformanceI finally deployed the first version of my portfolio project. All the features worked, the code was (mostly) clean, and I was proud of it. I sent the link to a few friends, and the first piece of feedback I got wasn’t about the features—it was, “Whoa, this takes a while to load.” It was a classic student developer mistake. I had focused so much on making it work that I never stopped to think about making it fast. This se... Read article

How I Finally Conquered CSS Layout: A Student’s Guide to Flexbox & GridFor the longest time, CSS layout felt like a dark art to me. My early attempts at building websites involved a chaotic mix of float, clear, and position: absolute. I spent more time fighting with my own CSS than actually building features. Centering a div felt like a monumental achievement. Then, in my web development course, we were properly introduced to Flexbox and Grid. It was a revelation. It was like someone hand... Read article

Navigating the Framework Maze: A Student’s Take on React, Vue, and AngularFor one of my CS courses this semester, we have to build a dynamic web application to showcase our final project. That means I’ve been thrown headfirst into one of the most daunting decisions a student developer has to make: choosing a JavaScript framework. The internet is full of strong opinions, and it feels like picking a side in a war. After weeks of tutorials and reading, here’s my attempt to make sense of the big ... Read article

Choosing a Look and Feel: My Dive into Material, Fluent, and UI5For a course on Human-Computer Interaction, we were tasked with building a prototype for a new application. A big part of our grade was the user interface and overall user experience. This meant I had to move beyond default HTML buttons and choose a real design system and component library. I quickly fell down the rabbit hole of design philosophies and ended up comparing three of the biggest players: Google’s Material Design, Mic... Read article