Hi I am Saladin [

GLITCH GLITCH GLITCH

]

What I learned

How to build with React and structure an app using client-side routing across multiple sections.

Key challenge

The blog pagination required a lot of upfront thinking to handle all edge cases gracefully. Deploying to GitHub Pages for the first time was also a learning curve — building and configuring the app correctly took more effort than expected.

What I learned

Full CRUD operations and a deep understanding of DOM manipulation. Developed UI design skills to build seamless elements like modals from scratch.

Key challenge

Keeping the JS object and the rendered DOM in sync. Any missed update between the two would silently break the UI — a subtle bug that took discipline to track consistently.

What I learned

How to connect external APIs to a UI and build a single-page app using native web technologies.

Key challenge

Handling different API request states. The launches section was especially tricky — the API response was deeply nested and hard to navigate, so I broke the data-binding logic into pseudocode steps before implementing it.

What I learned

A large-scale SPA with multiple APIs, OOP, and a full food experience — a consolidation and refinement of all my native front-end skills rather than introducing new ones.

Key challenge

The project had a 4-day window and was ambitious in scope. I used AI to handle repetitive work I'd done before, while staying hands-on for the parts that needed real judgment — most notably the food log, which involved complex date/time object formatting.

What I learned

A deep understanding of JavaScript OOP. Also worked with audio files to trigger sounds for specific user actions.

Key challenge

Smoothly transitioning between questions required careful state management. Syncing the ticking sound with the countdown timer was also a non-trivial timing problem.

What I learned

Social media front-end architecture, protected routes, and all types of API calls beyond just GET. Picked up several new tools along the way, and got introduced to Vercel for painless deployments.

Key challenge

The API changed mid-development — all base URLs and endpoints needed updating, and I hadn't yet learned about .env files. I rebuilt the whole configuration carefully without breaking anything. Managing loading and submission states for a smooth UX also meant revisiting and rewriting working code multiple times.

What I learned

E-commerce architecture, TypeScript, and a serious dive into security — securing API calls and protecting sensitive data like tokens. Also got hands-on experience with AI-assisted development.

Key challenge

NextAuth was the hardest part — the concept of creating a secret key to re-encode an already-encoded token, then merging it into the session with custom type declarations, is not intuitive without a team to lean on. TypeScript felt painful at first but paid off significantly in the long run.

What I learned

How to build and deploy a full-stack web app end-to-end — relational database design, authentication, real-time WebSocket subscriptions, and file storage buckets.

Key challenge

Keeping every backend layer in sync with a single action. Deleting a task isn't just a table row removal — any attached image in storage must also be deleted, or it becomes orphaned data. Getting that coordination right required treating each operation as a transaction.

What I learned

How to direct an AI through an entire production build — defining the architecture, enforcing the design decisions, and catching the mistakes it confidently made. The human role here was not writing code. It was knowing enough to recognize when the code was wrong.

Key challenge

AI does not debug itself. When the stylesheet collapsed due to a Tailwind v4 @apply constraint the model wasn't aware of, identifying the root cause and directing the fix still required a developer who understood what was happening under the hood.