People And Websites #3 - Dušan
And here comes the third edition of People And Websites brought to you by yours truly! Our guest today is non other than Dušan!
Hey! Can you introduce yourself to the readers?
Hello! My name is Dušan, I come from Serbia and I build software for a living.
My interests span a wide range of topics, from technology to psychology, biology and philosophy. I would say I'm a well rounded individual, knowledge wise, but I haven't yet had the chance to specialize in any field, aside from software of course. I'm also quite fond of people and love to socialize and I'm almost always in the mood for a good party or some kind of festival.
As far as hobbies go, I'm an avid audiophile, and I own a large collection of music on CDs, vinyl records, cassettes and even Mini Discs. I've spent more money on this hobby than I like to admit. I'm also interested in writing, retro & modern gaming, home automation, poetry, table top RPGs, trading card games and the like.
What's the story behind your website? What made you want to start it? Run me through the whole history!
It was back in 2019, I remember I wanted to start a website solely because I thought a developer should have one. And since I didn't particularly like any of the established options I elected to write my own private content management system from scratch. It took me around six months to write and I've been perfecting it ever since. The idea to take the blog seriously came about a bit later. And though I'm not a frequent writer by any means when I do have something to say that little website I wrote years ago comes quite in handy!
The website has gone through a myriad of design changes, because I suck at design and I'm never quite satisfied with it. At first I tried to mimic Google's material design and I've had some success with it, but as the years went on I settled on a flat design with pastel colors. I went through many different color schemes, but I'm mostly fond of the ones I didn't actually invent myself, ha ha, such as gruvbox, dracula and most recently cattpuccin. All of which have featured prominently on my website for a time.
What's your tech stack?
The tech stack itself has changed a ton throughout the years, but the core idea has always remained the same, a classic CMS with a database, hosted on some VPS somewhere.
The first version was built using PHP, but then I got bored of it and impulsively rewrote the entire codebase in JavaScript using Node.js, a terrible idea in hindsight, which is why I've been contemplating rewriting everything in Go yet again. 😂
The current stack (hosted on Hetzner, because I'm cheap) includes:
- Node.js
- MariaDB
- Redis (Redict)
- Nginx
- Docker
Is it overkill? Yes, especially the docker part, but I love it and I'm quite proud of it.
What's your favorite part of having a website?
Besides being able to tinker with it whenever I choose, It'll have to be the freedom to express myself creatively with my blog. When I have something to say I can easily share it with everyone and get feedback.
I can say I've met some truly wonderful people and that has to be worth something!
What got you into programming and sysadmin?
For as long as I can remember I've been very much into technology. My dad used to get a new phone every few years (back when phones were exciting and novel) and that presented a unique opportunity to help him set them up, which I've always been good at intuitively. I would say my interest in programming stems from this intuitive understanding of technology I've had ever since I was a child.
I seriously got into programming at around age 13, when I got my first computer. I remember being amazed at how much it could do, much more so than a phone. Then I randomly saw a YouTube video that introduced me to the concept of computer programs and my life has never been the same afterwards.
As far as sysadmin goes, I know enough to be dangerous, but I wouldn't say I'm ready to sail into those waters professionally. I got into it by necessity and out of curiosity. I'm an avid supporter of Linux and other FOSS projects and I naturally wanted to know how that worked. So here I am, some time later, where I can confidently set up some servers when needed, but don't expect me to operate your RHEL clusters any time soon. 😂
Give me a cool fact about yourself I certainly don't know.
I used to be an amateur theater actor in my home town. It's something I've neglected in the last few years but something I'd like to revisit in the future. I took part in performances usually central to Serbian culture and history, like Gorski vijenac by Petar Petrović Njegoš II and Mali mi je ovaj grob by Biljana Srbljanović along with some more satirical works such as Džandrljivi muž by Jovan Sterija Popović.
Recommend me a few people that have a really cool website and who I should interview next! What should I ask them?
I'm not really sure what you could ask them (or if you can even get a hold of them 🙃), but here they are in no particular order:
- Niki writes about programming, UI & UX. I particularly like this article of his about what every developer should know about Unicode.
- Ru is a software developer from India, but she writes about many things in addition to tech, be it book reviews, or just about anything that's happened in her life recently. She's also an avid soccer fan and a moderator of Fosstodon, the Mastodon instance I call home.
- Marc Brooker, another software developer, but throws in some networking from time to time. I recently stumbled upon his website and discovered it's quite the gold mine of knowledge and interesting things I probably wouldn't have known without reading his blog.
This was Day 19 of #100DaysToOffload!