People often ask me why I became a web developer.
The honest answer is that I don't think I ever wanted to become a web developer.
I just wanted to build things.
When I was in elementary school, my uncle gave me my first computer. Like many kids, I spent hours playing games. I watched YouTube, browsed Facebook, and clicked on whatever looked interesting.
I don't remember the first website I visited.
I don't remember the first YouTube channel I subscribed to.
What I do remember is wondering how all of it existed.
Someone had built these games.
Someone had made these websites.
Someone had created these videos.
For the first time, the internet felt less like a place to consume things and more like a place where people created things.
I wanted to become one of those people.
Curiosity Was Always the Beginning
People often ask how I learned programming.
The answer is surprisingly boring.
School.
YouTube.
W3Schools.
Stack Overflow.
freeCodeCamp.
Documentation.
Thousands of Google searches.
Nothing special.
What mattered wasn't where I learned.
It was why I kept learning.
Every tutorial started with the same thought.
"I wonder how this works."
That sentence has quietly shaped most of my life.
Sometimes it became a new programming language.
Sometimes it became a bicycle.
Sometimes it became a PC that I assembled myself.
Sometimes it became a side project that nobody ever used.
The question was always more exciting than the answer.
I Build More Than Software
Looking back, I've noticed a pattern.
I don't just enjoy building software.
I enjoy building.
I've built computers.
I've assembled my own bike.
I've spent weekends redesigning logos that nobody asked me to redesign.
I've bought domains for ideas that never became products.
I've started projects that never saw the light of day.
I've probably created more unfinished folders than finished applications.
Oddly enough, none of that feels like failure.
Building has never been about reaching the finish line.
It's about seeing an idea become something real.
There is something deeply satisfying about opening an empty folder and slowly watching it turn into something that didn't exist yesterday.
I don't think I'll ever get tired of that feeling.
The Internet Didn't Teach Me
People often say the internet taught them everything they know.
I think my experience is a little different.
The internet didn't just teach me.
It raised me.
It introduced me to programming.
It helped me find communities.
It led me to Bangkit Academy.
It helped me discover GitHub and LinkedIn.
It eventually helped me land my first job.
Without the internet, I honestly don't know what my life would look like today.
Maybe I would still be curious.
Maybe I would still build things.
But I doubt I would have found the same opportunities.
The Good and the Bad
The internet has made knowledge almost free.
Today I can ask AI a question, read documentation from someone on the other side of the world, or learn an entirely new framework before lunch.
That still amazes me.
But it comes with a price.
The same internet that taught me also taught me to compare myself with everyone else.
There will always be someone younger.
Someone smarter.
Someone shipping faster.
Someone making more money.
Some days, it's motivating.
Other days, it quietly steals your happiness.
I've learned that the hardest part isn't keeping up with technology.
It's remembering that someone else's timeline doesn't have to become mine.
AI Changed the Way I Build
I use AI almost every day now.
It has become part of my workflow.
Sometimes it feels like having another engineer sitting beside me.
Other times it feels like borrowing someone else's brain.
It's incredibly useful.
But I also notice something else.
The easier it becomes to get answers, the easier it becomes to stop thinking.
I'm grateful I learned programming before AI became part of everyday development.
Back then, getting stuck meant reading documentation, trying different approaches, breaking things, and eventually understanding why something worked.
Today AI helps me move faster.
But understanding still matters.
When AI gets something wrong, experience becomes the difference between accepting an answer and questioning it.
Looking Around My Room
Sometimes I look around my room and realize how many parts of my life exist because I wanted to understand how something worked.
A bicycle I assembled.
A computer I built.
Projects running on my own domain names.
Ideas that became websites.
Ideas that never became anything.
Some people collect souvenirs.
I collect things I've built.
Each one reminds me of a different version of myself.
A version that knew less, but was curious enough to start anyway.
Maybe That's Who I Am
For a long time, I thought programming defined me.
Now I don't think it does.
Programming is simply one of the tools I use to build things.
If web development disappeared tomorrow, I think I would still be building something.
Maybe furniture.
Maybe electronics.
Maybe bicycles.
Maybe something I can't even imagine yet.
Because when I look back at my life, the constant was never the technology.
It was the excitement of turning an idea into something real.
Maybe that's all I've been trying to do since someone handed me a computer in elementary school.
Build something that didn't exist before.
