Originally posted on Medium.com
Hello world! Greetings. First of all, let me introduce myself to you. I am Snehanshu Phukon. I am a software developer based in India. My work mostly consists of web applications built in Node.js, Python, and PHP. I also take a keen interest in DevOps. I love how extensive AWS is, how simple Digital Ocean is and how innovative ZEIT Now is. Currently I am doing freelance work as well as pursuing my graduation. If you think I can help you in any way, please don’t hesitate to let me know. You can reach me via my email id hello@snehanshu.com
My journey as a developer started when I somehow stumbled upon the following video
It’s a video teaching how to make a search engine like Google. Wow! really? Is it possible? Nonetheless, I watched part 1 and part 2 as well. It felt good, like magic. I was able to appreciate the video even more because I already had a little knowledge of HTML and C++, but not much that I could make something out of them. After watching the video, I had some faint idea about how can I use these technologies to build actual things.
My first desire to build websites arose when I first explored the internet on a mobile phone. It was a Nokia 2760 flip phone. It was way before I discovered the above-mentioned video. Those phones didn’t have an app store. I used to download games and music from some websites that all my friends knew. It is not that I haven’t encountered the internet before, our school’s computer lab had an internet connection, but we only got to use that occasionally. With the mobile phone, it was the first time that I had the freedom to explore the internet on my own.
Then I discovered Wapka.mobi, it was a website where one can make a website from their mobile phone. It was free and cool. It might not be cool by today’s standards, but back then it was amazing. I made a lot of cool sites with it — A family website, a social networking website, a forum, a wallpaper download site.
I started frequently visiting our school’s computer lab, whenever I got a chance. Once, one of my friends told me that we can make websites using HTML. Soon I borrowed books on HTML from our school library. Then I borrowed more HTML books, but the real learning started when I borrowed a book on VBScript . It is now an outdated language, but it is from where I got some idea about programming. When my code worked on the computer, I felt a kind of satisfaction similar to the feeling you get when you finally get to drink water after being thirsty for a long time.
Once I and my friend (he was also interested in coding) wanted to build something. We found some code on a book, those were ASP codes. We typed out the whole damn thing on a computer and tried to open the file with a browser. It didn’t work. We despaired. We didn’t have the slightest idea that there needs to be something installed on the computer to process the ASP code. We thought that it would just work.
It was the summer break of my tenth standard. I had just discovered the video on how to make a search engine. It really fuelled me. I watched a couple more of those. I was determined to master a programming language. Then came my life’s first big decision, whether I should go with PHP or with ASP. I guess most of the developers must have made the same decision in their beginning days. After going through a lot of articles, I decided to go with PHP. It was the right decision which with the coming time proved to be even truer. Throughout the holidays, I just learned and learned about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL. Adam Khoury, MrNickFrosty and Bucky Roberts (thenewboston) were the tutors from whom I learned the most.
My school was the part of a chain of government-owned schools which were completely free for the students. These were boarding schools and everything from academic fee, hostel fee and mess fee to even daily-used items, uniform and books were all free. So every year, there used to sports events where students from all these schools would come together to compete. Apart from sports, there was also an exhibition competition. Equipped with all the knowledge, it was time to apply them. So I decided to compete in the exhibition in the CS category. I built a library management system in PHP. It took me exactly 20 days to make it with the help of my friend. Good for me, I won the local/cluster level and the regional level. But I lost the national level. No problem, at least I got that far. I was proud.
The next year, I again competed in the exhibition. But this time I felt too lazy, so I competed with the same project. This time also, the same as last year, won the local/cluster level and the regional level but lost the national level.
Funnily enough, the following year, I gave the project to my junior and he too won the local/cluster level and the regional level but lost the national level. I guess people at the national level are making better projects than me.
A new event happened, I got a laptop. Yeah, until now, I didn’t have a computer and all the coding I ever did was on school computers. With my sword, I fought more battles and improved every time. (P.S. It’s the same laptop I’m currently writing this article from)
I will not explain all my following projects extensively, but just briefly mention them.
- RexBoard: An online multi-player board gaming website.
- HostBrowser: A PHP based file manager.
- Monsoon: A MVC framework for PHP inspired by CakePHP.
- Dislook: An opinion sharing website.
- Hyndex: A search engine made in PHP. (Yay!)
- Ujoni: A content management system (CMS).
- Crudder : An accounting software mainly for shop owners.
Then I got into a college (the one in which I am currently studying). Then for some time, my focus from web development went away. I started exploring machine learning. Then blockchain. Then electric vehicles. Then the stock market. I explored all these areas just briefly and all of them were tied to different startup ideas which sadly never got executed.
While being in college, I made Citk.cf, a class note hosting website. Then SPChat, a chatting application and also helped my friend build a website for a college club. In the college days, I learned Node.js and Python, which I love very much. I also learned Vue.js, Express.js, Tensorflow, Keras and much more.
I am currently doing an internship at NewMotion under the guidance of Andrew Han, sales executive at NewMotion. It is a work-from-home internship. My job is to build a charge point simulator using the OCPP protocol so that they can do some analysis on their backend. He reached out to me through LinkedIn after he found some electric-vehicle related projects on my GitHub profile.
Recently I have decided to do freelancing. I have created my freelancer profile on some of the platforms. I hope to be doing some projects in this way. If I get paid for something that I love to do, then there’s nothing better than it.
I am looking forward to adding more to this article in the future as more and more things happen.
I am amazed by your patience. Hats off to you. If you would like me to work on your projects, contact me by email hello@snehanshu.com.
Read part 2 here