From Chaos to Clarity

Lately, I’ve been working on a project I never thought would see the light of day. The tech stack was completely different from anything I’d tackled before. I built a portal using PHP, with the entire UI crafted in HTML. Coming from a Node.js background, I was out of my comfort zone, unsure of what to do and what to avoid. I promised myself I wouldn’t be that developer who sticks to just one tech stack—especially in today’s world, where AI makes it possible for anyone to create almost anything. Still, the process wasn’t easy. I wrestled with a ton of PHP libraries—installing, importing, and figuring out how to use them.

For the PHP backend, I went old-school. I handled routing with a switch statement, manually creating all the routes and APIs from scratch. Where I really struggled was the file structure. In my Node.js projects, I prided myself on clean, organized files. But with this project? Total chaos. Making the UI dynamic added another layer of confusion. I was second-guessing every decision, unsure of what would work.

I finished the project about a month ago, and to my surprise, I recently spoke with the stakeholders, and they want to deploy it. I was shocked. I know the portal works, but I’m not fully confident in the UI or some other parts. If I’d used React with something like Shadcn, I’d feel much better about it. But they saw the demo, liked it, and are ready to move forward. I was floored—part of me was like, “What the heck?” What if I need to add more features? What if it’s deployed and I can’t make changes easily? What if the project grows and becomes too complex?

After some back-and-forth, I convinced them that this is the version for now, and they agreed. Once my board exams are over, I plan to revisit and improve it.

What I’ve Learned

Looking back, I realize I just needed to rant a bit. But here’s the bigger picture: coding, at its core, is about breaking problems into smaller, manageable steps. With AI and modern tools, that’s more true than ever. If you can take one big problem and split it into ten smaller ones—and truly understand what your code is doing—you can build anything. The tools or tech stack? They’re secondary. What matters is understanding the ecosystem and how it all fits together.

I’ve been crazy busy lately, juggling board exam prep and multiple projects, but I’m enjoying the process. It’s messy, it’s challenging, but it’s also rewarding. I’ll probably write another update after my exams. For now, this is just me reflecting on the journey.