These are the hardest posts to write, particularly to start. It comes with the territory. Writers find, curate, and weave interlocking details into a coherent story. Rarely are we the focus of that narrative.
That said, thanks for stopping by! I'm Alec Horner, web developer, and content strategist, born and raised in Houston, Texas. My story isn't new, but it is uniquely mine. Like most big things, it started with something small.
I graduated with a degree in journalism. Looking back, it wasn't exactly journalism that drew me to writing, but the depth of research. I liked to find and share exciting, new things. At first, I thought I'd found the proverbial one. To an extent, I did. I researched, wrote, shared, and it made me happy.
But I got paid to write, not code. That was true until the moment the Discourse API went dark.
The early years
At the time, I was a contributor for MakerDAO, an Ethereum-based stablecoin protocol. DAOs are transparent and distributed by design, and most communications occur online in open forums. Contributors needed a means to quickly parse through the data and accurately depict critical events through weekly reports and community updates.
They needed a functional alternative. To say that I was surprised that I was tasked with crafting it would be an understatement. To this day, I'm convinced I was mistaken for someone else. I had experience with Python and various SQL engines, but I'd never built anything used by anyone but me.
I've been writing longer than I've been coding, but over the years that ratio skewed further and further towards development. That little web scraper opened the door wide open. I'd found a new, seemingly unlimited, form of creativity.
For the next two years, I took any data-wrangling gig I could find. I built local Postgres servers, distributed cloud servers, wrote APIs, and built analytics dashboards. But I also wrote bespoke research pieces, tracked KPIs, parsed sentiment data, and made frequent reports on my findings.
I learned the depths of SQL, which turned out to be far deeper than expected. I learned how to create, handle, and manipulate complex arrays. I learned more than I need to about data types, storage, lifespan, and best practices. But most importantly, I learned the importance of good data habits and operational security.
I had fun, but when it came to sharing my findings, I quickly hit a ceiling. Python's a fantastic language, but it's no secret that it's not particularly suited to web development.
2021 to Present
It was January 2021 when it finally hit me. I wanted to be a full-stack developer with a deep understanding of a product's life cycle. I wanted to unearth unique angles and craft my ideal implementations to display them.
These years I spent cramming my brain with as much Javascript and friends info as possible. I've never gotten tired of it, and I'm not sure I ever will.
Web development offers such a unique, personal touch on creativity. The reach is a part of it, but the rest is something more pure. The whimsical odds and ends don't seem like much, but make an application memorable. To me, that's art. It's also what makes both writing and programming infinitely exciting.
Each project is unique, and the toolkit is like an ever-changing orchestra. In that sense, they're encapsulations of life. First, you find an issue or pain point. You set out to remedy it, and you quickly find that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. All you have is your interpretation of what that might look like.
That's where my skillset allows me to thrive. I was fortunate to have a deep understanding of the copy and marketing process and ample training in customer-facing environments. It made me a far more adaptable developer and enabled me to provide value from conception to implementation.
Get in touch. Let's build something special!