Emolife Connect was my entry-point to professionally developing websites and applications.
Highlights
- Growth: Evolved from pixel-shifting frontend work to owning full-stack features across the platform
- Migration: Led the AngularJS to ReactJS migration, enabling a new generation of interactive applications
- Ticketing: Co-developed a ticketing system backing some of the largest sport events in the Netherlands
- Offline-first: Built an offline-first ticket scanner that let large venues validate tickets without connectivity
- Craft: Developed design sensibility and clean coding practices contributing to high-profile charity and NGO sites
I’d like to consider my time at Emolife Connect split into three phases across my 7 year tenure there: developing websites as a frontend developer, and then co-developing their applications in a Full-Stack environment.
Phase 1: Frontend developer
Prior to joining the company, all I knew of the web was the trifecta of HTML, CSS and Javascript. Building websites was still done a lot by utilizing the popular Bootstrap framework, when style frameworks helped those of us without a design eye build decent websites. Emolife Connect built websites for clients like high-profile charities and NGOs, which required developing and maintaining custom style components and designs with the then-popular SCSS.
The most interesting challenge was learning how to adapt to the coding style of a mature development team. Learning clean coding practices was as challenging as it was rewarding. I developed an eye for shifting pixels appropriately, learned fundamental design principles, and as a result developed something of my own taste. Some of these challenges were CSS-specific hardships (like trying out ways to fit hexagons together to form a clean grid), but a lot of the greatest lessons were learning to communicate much with clean and simple styling. My contributions grew from implementing designs to designing and co-developing high-profile websites.
Phase 2: Full-stack developer
Building websites became building applications. The websites we built became interactive through embedded widgets (or so-called “micro frontends”), built with AngularJS. The framework eventually proved outdated and required a migration to the now-popular ReactJS.
The ReactJS migration enabled the development a number of new full applications. I moved into full-stack development, pairing GraphQL with Laravel, to allow me to contribute to the business logic efforts. I co-developed a ticketing system backing some of the largest sport events in the Netherlands and built an offline-first scanner that let large events validate tickets without connectivity.