As 2026 began, I was immersed in a project I’d launched earlier in the year, one full of promise, as they often are. Instead of watching the ball drop, I savored falling snow, a solid cup of coffee, and progress on a golf app for our office tournament.
Scrolling through New Year’s highlights on X — America’s 250th celebrations and more — it struck me, it has been a full decade with React as my core framework. Those foundational years unlocked so much in my software engineering path, and they’re undoubtedly fueling what’s next.
Becoming a Web Developer
My tech journey began early, in elementary school, captivated by Neopets mini-games over dial-up during breaks and late summer nights. I’d grind for points, sell items, and optimize my storefront, which was the gateway to upgrades and gamified success. Customizing storefronts with HTML and inline CSS was the edge that built standout characters and thriving shops.
This journey evolved through middle and high school, crafting sites with builders, refining via HTML/CSS, layering in jQuery, and JavaScript. It became my canvas for video edits and graphic design. A high school friend in English class helped me elevate that from hobby to powerful tool. In junior year of high school, aiming for graphic design in college, WordPress clicked, merging my Dreamweaver-style build models with PHP, deeper HTML/CSS, jQuery, and JavaScript. I claimed my first domain, “joealongi.com” (now curiously parked after someone else’s global transfers).
I explored Java for a while, but limited resources and JavaScript’s web immediacy anchored me in WordPress. College wove web dev into my video and design work. Attending WordCamp at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY helped hone my portfolio for job pursuits, which was the goal of my design friend group in attending. Though I had already pivoted to business, thriving more in tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects than pure fine arts, I joined them to discover more.
A junior-year internship in business led to web development, summers deep in WordPress, introductions to C#/.NET with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I extended it nearly full-time, architecting product schemas, designing graphics, building landing pages, maintaining charity sites, authoring Markdown docs, and establishing e-commerce foundations in PHP, C#/.NET, and front-end essentials.
Becoming a Founder
Graduating with my Bachelor of Business Administration, a decade ago this New Year, I relocated to Florida from Buffalo, NY for a full-time application developer role, extending my internship’s product-driven focus. We transformed static sites into dynamic e-commerce hubs, delivering Amazon-caliber experiences.
Our forward-thinking company embraced Azure early, engineering advanced search algorithms for a vast, global inventory. Innovations like mega menus, that would unfold site hierarchies with category insights, streamlined user journeys beyond traditional navigation. I fortified core frameworks, crafted landing pages, interconnected products, and optimized Facebook ads for leads which was a seamless fusion of engineering and growth marketing.
Engineering was my core strength, amplified by data refinements that supercharged ad results. Recognizing engineering’s universal patterns in structuring, defining, and invoking functions as reflections of human logic helped me demystify complexity. My JavaScript drive pushed for dynamic enhancements, transcending Bootstrap’s scaffolding.
React emerged as the standout, inspired by Facebook integrations and visions of building at that scale, though Google and Angular intrigued me, React resonated profoundly. A year in, Medium insights propelled me to infuse JavaScript depth into our C#/.NET-PHP hybrid e-commerce platform. Experimenting with React apps and Node.js echoed my Java origins, “hello world” moments reigniting that foundational thrill.
A hackathon called StartupBus, as designer-engineer enabled growth opportunities, immense thanks to mentors who paved the way and celebrated my contributions. With friends, I launched a company to elevate our skills, leveraging it to master React and expand into AWS. This transition marked my shift from web dev to true software engineer. Platforms like Discord, powered by React Native, fueled ambitions.
I delved into AI and deep learning for eSports analytics, publishing on Medium and completing online courses. While math-intensive, it complemented React’s pull. React’s class-based lifecycle, componentDidMount and kin, demanded attention. As our venture grew steadily, I supplemented with local WordPress projects, in a startup mindset, this aligned with a co-founder’s Python expertise. Udemy sessions, Node/React builds, and endless Medium/Twitter reads accelerated it all. React and Node became my robust service offerings, in addition to the Python/Flask backends that were already our bread and butter.
In a conversions director role at a local firm, after moving back to Buffalo, I implemented patterns blending ad tech, Python dashboards, and architectural schemas into APIs. Our team there revolutionized local advertising, powered by dynamic pages and lightning-fast product discovery. I spent my evenings building the ventures apps, working on a React/Next.js product which one of my co-founders pitched and sold, eventually becoming “React Ventures”, a product available on Product Hunt, and finally solidifying my maker status.
Becoming a Software Engineer
Building on my directorship, co-founding, and relentless after-hours coding, I traded in my titles, and joined an agency committed to excellence. Collaborating with a top-tier dev, I absorbed methodologies, designed applications, engineered landing pages, and at the end of the day went home to code more.
My aim was software engineering mastery via Node and React. Eventually my role evolved at the agency, WordPress/Shopify applications sharpened my JavaScript in tandem with PHP/Liquid, but React still dominated my evenings.
Streamlining billing at the new agency inspired a React/Next.js calculator for multi-project workflows, mimicking precise legal tracking. Open source React tools even enhanced our pitches like Document Object Model (DOM) animations with Airbnb’s Lottie, inspired by the design studio collaborators, which delivered impact.
This momentum and after work hours, unlocked a funded product with co-founders, a multimillion platform path, but I prioritized stability, closing that chapter. The agencies demand for web apps provided that stability, allowing for navigating COVID without disruption, which echoed my first role’s security, now aligned with my passions.
Becoming a Software Architect
At my peak at the local agency, architecting for global clients, a LinkedIn outreach aligned with my goals, looking for Node.js, AI, and REST APIs, which was a decade’s serendipity leading to enterprise tech.
Since then, I’ve made thousands of contributions using React, Node, Angular, Python, C#/.NET, and SQL/NoSQL while scaling for states, countries, and millions of users. This evolution from web developer to software engineer to software architect included deep React expertise, Node-orchestrated AI, and massive JavaScript/Python data flows.
Interviews evolved from initial nerves to articulate mastery for internal projects. Industry contacts sparked interviews at places like Meta, sharpening my focus on code quality and space-time complexity, and Microsoft, which deepened awareness of AI demand; Amazon outreach followed, though nothing materialized. The path felt boundless, but reflection brought clarity and a new set of goals to my whole focus.
Embracing the Next Evolution
Having architected premier platforms, authored intricate code, and navigated high-stakes challenges, I am confidently pivoting languages. It is not disillusionment with React or Java, tools that I’ve developed great code and value in, but an evolution toward new paradigms.
Today’s landscapes of React’s hook ecosystems and Java’s versioning empower developers, yet team dynamics sometimes favor speed over precision. I am drawn to cultures prioritizing quality, like Angular’s structure, Python’s ML prowess, Rust’s typing, vector databases, and data streams. Simple frameworks accelerate agility, but enduring excellence wins long-term.
I champion the thoughtful coders, those brewing custom solutions, assembling hardware, coding deliberately and impeccably. After a React decade, and working on finalizing this golf app in React, Spring Boot, and SQL, I am now excited to turn the chapter to Angular, Python, and ML.
Novelty sparks innovation, patience yields quality, and now this year, this decade, I am pursuing future-proof. To some, it may seem selective, to me and like-minded peers, it’s a committed stride toward greater impact.
Engineering resilience, security, and future-ready software architecture. Follow on X, GitHub, and LinkedIn, and visit https://joealongi.dev/.