2018: The "It Works on My Machine" Era

DOST: Barangay Portal

Role: Co-Lead Developer (Internship)
Tech Stack: PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap, Google Maps API

The Story

This was my first real taste of software engineering. No tutorials, no hand-holding—just a problem statement: "We need to digitize barangay records."

We built the system from scratch over two months and delivered it locally to our supervisor for review. Although it wasn’t deployed live, the project gave me invaluable hands-on experience in planning, coding, and testing a complete application.

What I Learned

• Greenfield Development: Starting with a blank editor is both terrifying and liberating.
• User Perspective Matters: Even though it ran only locally, thinking about how barangay officials would use it shaped my design decisions.
• Full-Stack Experience: I acted as the DBA, backend developer, frontend designer, and tester—all in one.