Kortiku eps1: Intro
Tags: showdev, beginners, php, laravel
Published: 2021-04-06 13:35:22

Howdy, welcome to the first episode of Kortiku. My name is Shaquil Maria and I am a junior developer working my way through my bachelor degree in Information & Communication Technology. I was interested in technology since I was a little kid playing with hot wheels and remote controlled cars. I always used to disassemble them to see what was inside, and as I grew older and started messing with phones and computers I became more interested in how they function and the software that run on them. 

During the different classes of my bachelor I learned different programming languages and different concepts, but I never actually made a complete application that I can say is production ready with that knowledge. At some point during my study, I started working as a part-time web developer at a local company and there I sharpened my skills of frontend development, design and JavaScript. That is when I decided that it was time to turn my know how into practical use. I started working on different small time projects like clones and todo apps, but then again they were not full projects that you can publish for everyday use.

## So what is kortiku then? 🤔
Kortiku means short in my native language Papiamentu. I guess you can already imagine where this is going. Kortiku is a URL shortener that I developed in JavaScript with MongoDB as database and EJS as frontend templating engine. You can check it out [here](https://kortiku.herokuapp.com/). While I was satisfied to have created something that is on a level that I think is respectable, it was still just a simple JavaScript project, nothing complex.

I decided to add more features to the project, like a link-in-profile (like Linktree). I thought: "the more complex the app, the more I can learn". Like the development process of a production-ready (an app that goes live) application and development methodologies. So I decided to refactor the codebase of the project and switch from JavaScript to PHP, more specifically the Laravel framework.

## Why PHP?
Well, like I mentioned before, during my bachelor I learned a couple of languages. Java was the primary programming language of the study, but I also learned some PHP, JavaScript, Python, and Dart in order to create applications and projects for certain classes. Since I haven't used PHP in a while, this is the perfect opportunity to sharpen my skills in the language.


## So.. What is this blog about?
This post is the first of many (hopefully). This first post is the introduction to the Kortiku series, where I will be building the application in public, so that I can hold myself accountable, and share things I learn along the way. This series will go about the actual development of the application and about methodologies and architecture patterns that I implement and learn about, like Test Driven Development and Scrum.

Thank you for reading this intro post, and hopefully you join me on this journey. If you have a project that you wanted to work on, mention it in the comment section below and let's support each other so we can all learn and finish our side projects. 
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If you have any experience with PHP and Laravel, what is something that you like about it and what should I pay extra attention to?

See you next time.👊🏿

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@m15ky?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Mike Tinnion</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/writing?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>