Posted on Jul 25

From 'Coming Soon... Maybe' to Actually Shipping: A 2-Year Dev Journey

#webdev #opensource #react #buildinpublic

I Scrapped the 'Perfect' Portfolio Idea and Built This Raw System Instead

We all know the template for the "perfect" developer portfolio.

A polished grid of projects. A "skills" section with satisfying progress bars. A blog that hasn't been updated since 2023.
Clean. Professional. Completely sterile.

I tried to build that. Ghosted versions I lost count of.
It felt dishonest.

Because development isn't clean.
It's messy, it's iterative, and it sometimes breaks at midnight.
So I built a site that reflects that reality.

Context:
v1.0 [boot_sequence]
v1.1 [midnight_patchdrop]

The System in Action:
[ujjwalvivek.com]

The Philosophy & Technical Deep Dive:
[going_open_source.md]

The Raw Code:
[ujjwalvivek/portfolio]

A Dev Log Disguised as a Website

Instead of a portfolio, I built a living system.
A raw dev log that shows the thinking, not just the finished product.

The Terminal isn't an aesthetic. It's my native interface. It's how I think, so it's how you navigate. My raw logs are the content.
The Procedural Backgrounds aren't just eye candy. They're a realtime reflection of a mind that needs to see complex systems in motion.
It launched with bugs. Real users found them. I wrote [midnight_patchdrop] because shipping is a conversation, not a monologue.

What's Built

🧠 4 Procedural Background Generators:

Hologram cubes with 3D projection math
Circuit trees that grow recursively
Psychedelic fantasy patterns
Quantum node networks with Bezier connections

⌨️ Interactive Terminal Footer:

Type help for commands
Try maximumfun / minimumfun for intensity control
run exit triggers a crash screen with hidden dino game (custom cooded 👀)

⚙️ Technical Features:

Custom markdown renderer with KaTeX math support
Fuzzy search with subsequence matching
PDF viewer with theme sync
Accessibility modes (respects prefers-reduced-motion)
and honestly, a lot more things. Curse of a fickle mind.

Code That Reflects a Philosophy

Building honestly means prioritizing the user's experience over a perfect facade.
It means respecting their preferences from the first line of code.

// Simple, powerful accessibility. This is non-negotiable. const shouldReduceMotion = window.matchMedia('(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)').matches; if (shouldReduceMotion) { // Turn off the chaos. Respect the user. setLowChaosMode(true); }

This isn’t a checklist feature. It’s a design principle.
The site doesn't track you, flash cookie banners, or beg for your email. It's built for contact, not conversion.

So, What's the Point?

This is an argument for building personal sites that are actually... personal.

Sites that reflect our real development journey, the curiosity, the breakthroughs, the late-night fixes.
Not just a sanitized list of buzzwords for recruiters.

It's a risk. It's not for everyone.
But it's honest.

The codebase includes real-world patterns for:

Canvas performance optimization
Accessibility in animations
Modular procedural systems
Terminal-style interfaces
Theme-adaptive components

Full technical breakdown lives in this [blog: going_open_source.md] with ASCII diagrams, math, code, confessions, all of it. It's a LONG read.

So I'll ask you: