A Few Updates, and the New Site!

Hi! We meet again.

It's been a while since I've last written on this blog, but I'm back. Since I last wrote, quite a lot has happened. And I'm excited to write about it.

First and foremost, I'd like admit something. Something that's been on my mind since I started coding, and since I started putting projects up on my GitHub almost 2 years ago.

I'm a kid.

I'm currently starting high school, and I've been coding for 5 years now. I've known code longer than I've known life as a teenager, and soon, I'll have been programming for over half my life. Truthfully, over the years, I've wanted to admit that I was a kid, but I was scared. I was scared that it would somehow invalidate me as a programmer and web developer. But I've realized now that in programming, or any profession for that matter, in my personal opinion, it is not about someone's age, but it is about someone's skill. Again, this is only from what I've seen, but this acknowledgement has led me to break the sense of stigma against me because of my age that I started feeling so many years ago.

I hope the fact that I'm just a kid doesn't negatively or positively affect your view of me as a programmer.

The New Site

Back in June, I started posting on my new domain at xtrp.io, this site. Having access to xtrp.io opened up a whole new array of opportunities for me, not limited by the static-site-only features of GitHub Pages.

I now had the ability to write and publish content with real backend languages like PHP and Node.js, which may seem simple, but to me, it was almost as if my whole view of programming as whole had changed.

Anyway, I hacked up a quick new design of a new site for xtrp.io in a couple days in June, and put it up, redirecting my old domain (xtrp.github.io) to the new one at xtrp.io.

Summer from July to the beginning of September was pretty a busy time in my life with numerous different things happening in terms of non-coding projects and social events, so I didn't do much coding then.

In the beginning of September, however, school started, and I now had more time for coding!

I've spent the past few weeks building, tinkering, and testing my new version of xtrp.io, which is the site you are seeing right now. The new site features MVC architecture built in PHP by yours truly, as well as an all-new design, all open sourced on GitHub.

This site was built effectively entirely by me, Gabriel Romualdo. The MVC architecture does not use a framework such as Laravel or Symfony; in fact, it was entirely written from scratch without a framework. The site is split into traditional models, views, controllers, and router directories (although the model is named "API" for brevity), and is built to be professional, with a robots.txt file, an RSS feed, a sitemap, and more.

My favorite page in the site is easily the 404 Page, featuring the humorous shrugging emoji. My favorite and possibly most used emoji, by the way.

Anyway, I've worked hard on this site, and I hope you enjoy browsing it. Of course, there is still a lot to do, with bug fixes, and images to add, and more, and I will keep you updated on this blog.

A few cool things to check out while you're here: the about page, my resume, and the projects page.

Thanks for scrolling, as always.

— Gabriel Romualdo, September 29, 2019