About Eric Nishio

I’m a fullstack JavaScript developer with over ten years of full-time experience. I build web apps primarily with React, React Native and Node.js. I’ve also taught web development courses at Digia and lectured at Arcada University of Applied Sciences.

• Currently work as a lead software developer at Digia
• Worked as an English teacher in Osaka, Japan
• Studied abroad in Japan
• IB graduate and BBA

In the 90s our family computer wasn’t yet connected to the Web so I played around with static HTML files and viewed them offline with a program called The Internet. A buddy of mine had already found his way online so he would share random animated GIFs that he had found and I would put them up on my homepage. Once my parents got us our first dial-up connection I was finally able to publish my work.

The hobby eventually grew into a side hustle of sorts when a friend of mine who worked as a programmer asked me if I could design some websites in Photoshop and lay them out in HTML. I was introduced to CSS and wrote a few lines of PHP, mainly to reuse markup. The idea of serving dynamic content from a database was a game-changer so I wanted to learn more about it.

It wasn’t until I got my first full-time programming job that I delved deeper into web development. I learned about modern tools and frameworks, methodologies and design patterns that felt overwhelming at first but were instrumental in directing me to become a professional web developer.