Curiosity led me to build websites, but what inspired me to continue was the potential impact of this hobby. I created websites for individuals and businesses to communicate their identities with more people than ever before. However, despite the world wide web’s apparent universality, my broadened linguistic perspective revealed remaining obstacles toward optimizing websites for worldwide audiences. Across cultures, colors carry different connotations, layouts must suit languages that read right-to-left or left-to-right, and users’ perceptions of domains tangibly influence revenue.

Building websites was fun, but eventually, I became eager to identify a grander motivation to continue pursuing them. At seventeen, I sat down to define my life’s purpose on a Google Docs file. Though now I would certainly select a more sophisticated typeface than Comfortaa, the words—carefully chosen and characteristically concise—still resonate with me.

I grew up in a home where my parents gave me the freedom and, thus, unspoken encouragement to explore what piqued my curiosity. At fourteen, I declared my mission to be developing skills to help others. Clichéd? Perhaps. Naïve? Possibly. But a worthy and inspiring cause, nonetheless. Today, this purpose is a beacon guiding me as I tackle challenges—from debugging to translating programming languages—with boldness, determination, and excitement.

I genuinely love web development—not in the sense that it’s a “superior” field or that everyone should learn it, but just personally. Being able to create on the web is universally empowering. Even if the nature of innovation in web development today sometimes sounds backward or excessively convoluted for simple goals, it’s exciting to make websites powerful, joyful, and modern.