Hello!

My name is Ryan Santos and I'm a frontend engineer, pool player, skater, gamer, and proud father of two lovable doggos. I always aim to pursue interests that are meaningful to me and building stuff with code happens to be one of the items on that list.

I haven't always been interested in software though and my career background has actually been rooted elsewhere in technology. To me, application development just seemed like a path for the intellectually gifted and I really just never thought of myself as the type. Nevertheless, there was something fun and interesting about it so I started a new chapter in my career.

At the beginning it was very easy for me to dismiss things as too frustrating or requiring too much effort. There were many times where I wondered if I should quit. The imposter syndrome was real and it was a frequent visitor that always overstayed its freaking welcome.

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before."
-Social Reformer Jacob Riis

It's normal to find stagnation when faced with difficult tasks. Maybe you've been at a rubik's cube for a couple hours and just can't seem to get that last row right. Or you've been going mono e mono with a jar of pickles but just can't get the damn thing to pop. Don't quit! Progress isn't how we think it's suppose to be. Check it out...

plateau
Fig. 1 - We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope that it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done.

The diagram above is called the "Plateau of Latent Potential" and it states that work is never wasted. It is simply being stored and that sometimes it won't be until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.

Anyways this is something I remind myself constantly now and it always eventually proves to be true. With the correct mind set, we are capable of things we would never expect from ourselves...believe Neo.

ReactGraphQLTypeScriptPrismaOOPNodeJSLaravelFunctionalFigmaGitNetlifyHerokuAngularSSR_LodashPythonReduxRESTCloudinaryDesign PatternsSCSSTDDD3PHP

Skills & Experience

My primary skills fall mostly under the frontend spectrum of the tech variety. However, I have experience in all areas of the stack and don't mind getting my hands dirty whether it be frontend, backend, or anything in between.

I've been part of teams employing scrum methodologies, involved in the feature planning processes, Git rebase and merge workflows...and more. Contact me if you'd like to know more.