photo of Alex Cabrera

Technical Chops

I love working hand-in-hand with designers and engineers to develop products that stay true to the original ethos of the web.

My current stack

I start projects by flipping between Figma and iA Writer to flesh out ideas visually and jot down technical specs that guide engineering, design, and business stakeholders.

As soon as possible, I like to move to functional prototypes. I write type-safe code and pair it with a serverless or microservices architecture which helps me iterate quickly in the browser. A continuous integration pipeline is configured to make sure changes can be pushed to an environment where all parties are able to follow progress and provide feedback. This combination of technologies ensures the prototype can be handed off to engineers and jumpstarts getting the product into a shippable production state.

Front-End

  • Typescript LogoTypescript
  • React LogoReact
  • Tailwind LogoTailwind
  • CSS Modules LogoCSS Modules
  • NextJS LogoNextJS

Server-Side

  • Node.js LogoNode.js
  • AWS LogoAWS
  • Vercel LogoVercel
  • Mongo Realm LogoMongo Realm

UX/UI

  • Figma LogoFigma
  • iA Writer LogoiA Writer

The old faithfuls

The Python/Django ecosystem served me well for the better part of a decade and I still appreciate the idiomatic nature of that architecture; The Zen of Python remains a fantastic set of guidelines for approaching any kind of system design. Over the years, I've often been responsible for sysadmin duties and have spent a ridiculous amount of time up to my elbows in server configurations.

On the UX side, pairing Sketch with Invision and Zeplin to create interactive prototypes and style guides was a fantastic way to communicate concepts and develop scalable design systems.

Front-End

  • CoffeeScript LogoCoffeeScript
  • Sass LogoSass

Server-Side

  • Python LogoPython
  • Django LogoDjango
  • Ansible LogoAnsible
  • PostgreSQL LogoPostgreSQL
  • Redis LogoRedis
  • Nginx LogoNginx
  • Debian LogoDebian

UX/UI

  • Sketch LogoSketch
  • Invision LogoInvision
  • Zeplin LogoZeplin

Relegated to the dustbin

In 1998, I started building on the web because bagging groceries in the Miami sun over the summers was no fun at all. I used to take the bus over to the fancy Barnes & Noble in town and copy code examples into a spiral notebook. After spending a few months putting together some truly terrible pages on Angelfire, I landed my first gig building a website for a local company that leased arcade machines—a dream job for a 16-year old.

Front-End

  • 🤣DHTML
  • ✨Dreamweaver
  • ⚡️Flash

Server-Side

  • 🥁Drumbeat
  • 🤢PHP
  • 🤮ASP
  • 🛒MySQL
  • 🕸Apache

UX/UI

  • 📷Photoshop
  • 🖋Freehand
  • 💯OmniGraffle