DEV Community: irfan k

Building Fixit..

irfan k — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:12:53 +0000

and the map appears 👀

after a 1.5 month break because of semester exams, i'm finally back.

i touched react again and man... i felt rusty as hell. for a moment i genuinely thought i forgot everything 😭. i couldn't even set up a fresh vite project, got frustrated, closed the laptop, went outside, came back, opened the docs instead of another tutorial and somehow got everything working myself lol.

honestly, that felt way better than going back to tutorial hell.

and now, fixit begins.

fixit is a community based area issues reporting app. it's actually my second project idea. the first one is still staying a secret for now 👀.

my first goal was getting the map up and running, and seeing it finally render felt pretty satisfying. also, today i learned that leaflet and react leaflet are actually two different things 😭. i seriously thought they were the same until i started reading the docs.

from here, i'm planning to build this in public and be a lot more active on dev.to. i've got a lot more to build, a lot more to learn, and a lot more to post here as the project grows.

i'm hoping this project pushes me to stay consistent, both with coding and writing. hopefully the next post isn't after another 1.5 month break 😂.

see you in the next update :)

what django feels like after react

irfan k — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:00:47 +0000

after spending the last 10 months in the frontend world, javascript started feeling like home. react made sense, its ecosystem made sense, and i got comfortable there.

but i wanted to go full stack. so i spent nearly a month just… deciding. which backend, which language, which path. longer than i’d like to admit.

i ended up picking django. which was surprising even to me, because i had zero python background. it meant leaving behind everything familiar and starting from scratch. new language, new mental model, new way of thinking about web apps. still felt like the right call though.

so i learned python. then jumped into django.

i’ve been going through views, urls, and templates lately. posting about it a bit late, but that’s genuinely where i am right now.

to actually understand how things connect, i built a small project. calling it an “app” is generous. it was mostly just me poking around trying to make things work. but it helped.

one thing that actually surprised me was django’s url routing. the moment i saw it, it reminded me of react router. same core idea, different syntax. that one familiar thing made the whole thing feel less foreign.

honestly, i’ve enjoyed django more than i expected to. there’s some setup at the start that feels like a lot, but once you’re past it, the framework just gives you things. you’re not stitching packages together to get basics working.

i’m still a beginner. there’s definitely harder stuff ahead. but after months in react-land, django has been a genuinely refreshing shift. seeing a completely different philosophy for building web apps changes how you think a little.

choosing django still feels like the right decision. more updates as i keep going.

🚀 My First Hacktoberfest Experience

irfan k — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:02:28 +0000

my contributions

peri

added custom language support and improved ui responsiveness.

pull request

https://lnkd.in/e5zzMSFb

mind care

enhanced frontend components and adjusted navigation styling.

pull request

https://lnkd.in/eivA58hn

exam countdown extension

added a weather widget with custom location support and automatic location detection.

pull request

https://lnkd.in/eU_rwu8K

music_app

updated layout styles in home and inputbar components to improve the mobile experience.

pull request

https://lnkd.in/ejTAwmNW

overview

12 merged pull requests

8 open source projects contributed to

frontend development, responsiveness improvements, ui enhancements, and feature implementation

experience working with real world codebases, code reviews, and open source collaboration