Why I Updated My Portfolio Website
Over the years, I’ve updated my portfolio webpage multiple times. Whenever I reached a milestone, whether it was my first job or my bachelor’s graduation, I quickly updated my portfolio to showcase my newly gained experience. Often, this was also a practical move for recruiters, as I was usually preparing to look for a new job at these milestones. This time, however, while nearing the completion of my master’s degree marked a new milestone, I wasn’t initially motivated to upgrade my portfolio. I wasn’t particularly interested in learning a new front-end framework, and most importantly, I was happy with my previous website. Sure, it needed updates to reflect my new experiences and skills, but I wasn’t planning to rewrite it entirely.
Recently, Vercel, the platform where I hosted my previous portfolio built in Svelte, dropped support for Node 18, requiring me to either upgrade my version or rewriting my website. It was frustrating, especially in a world where HTML pages from the 90s still render perfectly on modern browsers. I originally chose Svelte because I believed it would help me escape the bloat of frameworks like Angular and React, bringing me closer to the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while keeping my code modular. However, I soon realized that I still had far too many dependencies with Node, Svelte, and Vercel. I still appreciate the benefits of Svelte, React, and Angular but I realized that they’re designed for larger projects, not a simple portfolio website.
This time, I wanted to strip things down even further and just write a simple HTML page with some CSS, a few small touches like a JavaScript typewriter effect, and some images. The goal was to eliminate external dependencies and create something that works anywhere with internet access and that will likely run for the next 20 years. I abandoned features like my image carousel and fancy sliders, which added complexity and required constant device-specific adjustments, in favor of clear, descriptive content. A little bit of color (I went with my favorite Gruvbox theme), some images, and basic CSS is enough to make a responsive website that isn’t boring.
I managed to setup the website in roughly two days and enjoyed the process. Of course, my opinions might change again, and I might rewrite everything from scratch someday. But for now, I’m happy with the result.
PS: I plan to post more blog entries to improve my writing skills, but only time will tell if this goal sticks or joins my long list of unfinished ideas.