How did you end up working as a frontend developer?

Pre-computer life

I don’t remember much about my life before I met computers, but it wouldn’t be very interesting anyway. I remember my parents wanted to teach me (without success) to draw. And how I pulled a goose by its neck in a zoo but it didn’t get through the grating. But… I heard this story later on.

First computer

I got my first computer from my uncle as a gift. It was Soviet clone of the legendary ZX Spectrum in orange case. With the computer I got cassettes with games, a tape player and a book about computer internals and introduction to Basic, which was embedded in the Spectrum.

Every game took about five minutes to load and they were boring as all games are, so I gave up shortly and started to type some code from the book and tried to change it.

QuickBasic

I got my first experience in real, sane programming at Children’s Creative Center at Polyanka when I was 13. My Spectrum experience found much use there: while other pupils scratched their heads trying to draw a flowchart I was finishing my program on the computer.

There weren’t enough computers for all pupils so we worked in pairs. During the year we had to make a game. I worked with my neighbor and best friend Ivan. Programming wasn’t his passion but he drew very well, and due to our common love of metal music, blood and skeletons we were an awesome team. Unfortunately we didn’t finish our game.

First steps in web development

I discovered HTML in Russian “Submarine” magazine in 1999. Using articles in the magazine and without the internet at home I made my first personal homepage.

It was the beginning of the biggest passion in my life that became my work a few years later. PHP, my own CMSs, a lot of free hostings, many versions of my homepage and thousands of lines of hodgie code.

Meanwhile I entered the Moscow State College of Information Technology where I learned touch typing and Microsoft Office. My classmate and I started there another Project of the Century (indeed unfinished) — a game based on “The Lord of the Rings” book.

First job

Studying in the college became a work there as a computer class manager, teacher and web developer. I shared a room on a computer class’ balcony with a guy who fixed hardware and who came to work afternoon. I made the college’s new website but necessity to scold students and to look after the class distracted me from the coding.

Photography

For unknown reason I bought a camera after one of my first salaries. Eventually it became my second big passion.

Frontend

After a year of working at SEO oriented web design studio I suddenly changed PHP and backend to JavaScript and frontend.

Dogs

At one point it became quite boring to code alone and now I get a lot of help from The Most Beautiful Dessi the Dachshund and since 2011 from Tsiri the Saluki but she’s a beginner coder yet.

Moscow ✈︎ Berlin

After a half-year of Skype interviews I found a job in Berlin, Germany and we moved there with my wife and my dogs.

sapegin / ama