I learned to code back in 1996.

I was still a kid, but computers were always around me. My dad loved tech, and I remember wanting to do whatever he was doing. I would open Microsoft FrontPage 97, drag things around, tweak HTML, and upload pages to Geocities through FTP. I cannot remember the URL now, but I still remember one detail clearly: a Megazord image on the page.

That was the spark.

As I got older, the things I loved started showing up in the things I built. I was really into TV and animation. Back in Indonesia, I remember my uncle and cousins gathering with my family to watch animated movies. Those were good memories, and they stayed with me. I kept making fan sites, first for shows and games, and later for anime.

Then the internet changed, and I changed with it.

Social media became the default place to share content, so fan sites were not as common anymore. But the core excitement never left me. I still loved creating experiences for people.

In school, I studied Computer Science and Engineering, and that is where I found my lane: user interface development. UI felt natural to me, almost like a continuation of what I already loved about animation and storytelling. I started seeing web development not just as code on a page, but as a way to shape how people actually feel when they use a product.

Today, I get to do that at Crunchyroll as a Staff Software Engineer. I have helped build and guide UI applications for anime on living room devices, and honestly, it still feels surreal that my work and my passion overlap this much.

But the path here was not straight.

After graduating, I started at DIRECTV as a Software Developer in Test. I built tools that made set-top-box testing easier and more reliable, and that role taught me discipline and quality at a deep level. Later, I moved to OpenX to focus on UI engineering, where I built interfaces to help publishers monetize inventory, configure ad rules, and integrate ad code.

Across both roles, one lesson kept coming back: understand what users need first, and let everything else follow.

I also made plenty of mistakes.

Some came from communication. Some came from assumptions. Some came from moving too fast. But those moments taught me how to reflect, adjust, and grow. Over time, I became more intentional about measuring outcomes with data. Dashboards and analytics became how I caught issues earlier and recovered faster.

One of the moments I am most proud of came through customer support.

A fellow anime fan could not play content on their living room device, no matter what they tried. At the time, I was helping deliver a full rewrite of that app, and all we could do was ask for patience. On launch day, their issue was fixed, and they could watch again. I still remember how that felt. It was a huge reminder that behind every bug is a real person just trying to enjoy something they love.

If there is one thing I hope people take from my journey, it is this:

When your work lines up with what you care about, hard days still feel purposeful, wins feel bigger, and the journey feels worth it. Computer Science is not easy, and mistakes are part of the process. But those mistakes can become your best teachers. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep building things that genuinely help people.