Back to the Web: Rediscovering Web Development After Years in Data

Back to the Web: Rediscovering Web Development After Years in Data

I’ve spent the past several years deep in the world of data—building ETL pipelines, automating business processes, wrangling SQL, and making dashboards tell better stories. It’s what I do best, and honestly, I love it.

But somewhere along the way, I lost touch with something I used to enjoy: web development.

I first dabbled in web dev back in school with Django, and later at work when I had to wrangle some AngularJS projects. But over time, my focus shifted entirely to data engineering, automation, and business intelligence—things like SSIS, SSRS, Python scripting, and SQL performance tuning.

And while I never really needed front-end skills in my day-to-day work, I started feeling that itch again—the urge to build things from the ground up.

So Why This Site?

A few reasons:

1. A Personal Playground – I wanted my own little space on the internet to tinker, experiment, and showcase projects.
2. A Place to Host My Work – I’ve built a lot of cool things over the years, and it felt like time to start documenting them.
3. A Low-Key Way to Level Up My Skills – Rediscovering modern web dev felt like a challenge worth taking.
4. (Let’s Be Real) It’s Also a Portfolio – At the end of the day, this is also about career growth—but I don’t want it to scream “hire me” in a cringey way.

I didn’t just want a cookie-cutter portfolio. I wanted something that actually felt like me.

Picking a Tech Stack

Since I hadn’t touched web dev in years, I had some catching up to do. React? Vue? Svelte? Serverless? Full-stack frameworks? Everything had changed since my AngularJS days.

But then I found Astro—and it just clicked.

Here’s why:

• It’s built for speed – No unnecessary JavaScript bloat, just fast static pages.
• It’s flexible – I could bring in React, Svelte, Vue, or nothing at all.
• It feels like a mix of old and new – Writing .astro files felt natural, kind of like writing Django templates but with modern capabilities.

I also loved the “opt-in complexity” mindset—start simple, and only add dynamic features if you need them. No SPA overhead, no unnecessary JavaScript. Just lean, fast, and scalable.

This was exactly what I needed for my site.

Lessons (Re)Learned

Jumping back into web dev after years in data came with some fun realizations:

• State management is still a headache. React’s useEffect() struggles felt eerily similar to debugging ETL pipelines.
• Naming things is still the hardest part. Whether it’s tables, variables, or CSS classes—good names matter.
• Performance optimization is a universal skill. Query tuning in SQL and minimizing client-side JavaScript? Same brain, different playground.
• Web frameworks have changed a lot—but good fundamentals stay the same.

Building this site reminded me why I love learning new things. And honestly? It’s been fun.

What’s Next?

I plan to use this site to document:

✔ Projects I’ve built (both data and web-related)

✔ Things I’m experimenting with

✔ Random notes, thoughts, and maybe even some hiking trip reports

So if you’ve made it this far—thanks for reading! If you’re building something new, or rediscovering an old skill, I’d love to hear about it.

Here’s to the next phase. 🚀

Hi, I'm Chris Blazer

Data engineer and software developer from the SF Bay Area, specializing in ETL, data pipelines, business intelligence, and automation. When I'm not coding, I'm probably hiking , snowboarding, or chasing summits.

Contact me:

Email | GitHub | LinkedIn