Hi, I'm Hunter

Hello, world!

My name is Hunter Faulkner, and I am a Frontend SDE. I have been meaning to start a blog for over a year and have gone back and forth between creating my own from scratch or using a platform. After all that indecisiveness, I've decided to just give it a go!

Me and my SO:

But why do a blog?

While I'd be happy if someone gets value from what I write, I'm actually motivated to blog for pretty selfish reasons. I always retain information the best by making rough study guides as though I were teaching myself. I've used Anki before as well, but I prefer writing about what I'm studying in detail. Editing adds to the active recall too! Do I ever go back and study those guides? No! In the short- to mid-term, I don't have to because the act of making the guide solidifies the topic for me.

Long-term, I get my own personal reference that I can use to recall certain pieces of information quickly. This process forces me to expand my perspective to see the bigger picture. Plus, teaching makes one painfully aware of any gaps in knowledge. By filling those gaps via my "guide-making" process, I can fully understand the material and any relevant motivations for applying whatever I've learned.

For example, I have had to relearn many CSS styling quirks a hundred times over. By writing, I can reinforce what I learn and provide a personalized reference on how to do things in the future if I forget. In fact, the first post I plan to write (after this intro) is about centering a logo between two sibling components of arbitrary width with flexbox, something I had to relearn for the 382^nd time last week.

More about me

I'm originally from the Mississippi side of the Memphis metro area, but I currently live in Sydney, Australia. I've been here for nearly 3 years and lived in Tokyo, Japan before that. I started coding in early 2018 and previously worked in data science (typically using Python, R, and SQL).

Beale Street in Memphis:

My nontraditional switch to frontend started while I was advancing my skills in data visualization/reporting. What started as implementing basic HTML and CSS to enhance reports gradually evolved into a passion for web development.