About

I'm John Lin. Writing code, taking photos, writing words — that's pretty much what my life looks like right now.

I made this site myself, and I run the content myself. Everyone's chasing speed and traffic these days; I just wanted a place that could grow at its own pace.

It began with a certificate I never passed

All of this actually started with a certificate I never passed.

In my second year of high school I was preparing for the Level C web design exam. But what it tested had little to do with what the industry actually uses; the techniques were over a decade old. I followed the reference book, working in software I found clumsy and unfamiliar, until I couldn't stand it and gave up. Of course I didn't pass. I just felt that exam couldn't really prove anything.

To prove that, I walked into web design on my own. Back then I knew almost nothing about CSS or JavaScript, but I was clear about what I wanted: to make something genuinely useful, and show that piece of paper was pointless.

It wasn't pretty, but people actually used it

I went after the most real problem in my class. Everyone was always digging through group chats and the school website to find schedule changes and exam timetables. So I built a class information platform, starting from the plainest static page, all the way to a live database, so the moment something updated, everyone's screen updated too.

It wasn't pretty, but my classmates actually used it, and it genuinely made a few things easier for them. That feeling was something I'd never had in all my years of school. For the first time I knew: teaching myself, I could actually make something worth making.

At my lowest, I wrote myself back together

Around the same time, a procedural mistake in the school's admissions pushed me into a department I had no interest in. I already had my doubts about the system, and after this, what little trust I had left was gone.

That half year was dark. I let go of most of my schoolwork and threw myself into teaching myself, and I started writing. Not for anyone to read, just to work out who I actually was, what I cared about, where my limits were. It started as complaining, and slowly turned into asking myself, over and over, why.

Writing and writing, I put that nearly-broken version of myself back together, piece by piece, and wrote out a set of values that were my own.

A place no one can take from me

Looking back, those two things were really the same thing. Walking into web design, or standing back up at my lowest, both times I first found a steady place inside myself before I could move outward. A goal, a belief, a spot I built for myself that could hold my weight.

I call it my origin. It isn't a box someone drew for me. It's mine: no one can take it, and I don't have to wait for anyone to hand me a certificate to validate it.

Code, writing, photography — to me they're one thing

So code, writing, and photography are really one thing to me. I see a lot of messy, unsorted stuff, and I want to get my hands on it, make it clear, and keep it.

• Code: turning ideas into systems that work.
• Writing: sorting out the thoughts in my head.
• Photography: keeping the moments worth pausing for.

The work looks different, but underneath it's the same origin at work.

Honesty, and my own pace

I care a lot about honesty. The kind of thing people say just to be seen, that they don't even believe themselves, I can't really bring myself to say. I'm also wary of passing off AI-generated things as human creation. I use AI myself; it's a great tool. But I won't use it to pretend something was made by my own hands, my own eyes.

And I don't want to run at the whole world's pace. Everything's in such a hurry these days; I just want to work at my own. I'm not saying these for everyone; they're more like a filter. The people they suit will stay, and we'll probably get along. The ones they don't, that's okay too.

Where I am now, still moving forward

Right now I'm in university. A few friends and I started a club, and I built its official site on my own, then grew it into a whole learning platform, with courses, progress tracking, and an achievement system, everything from the database to the interface built by me. I've got a few other projects running, and I'm slowly writing my long-form pieces on Substack.

Further out, I've set my sights on the Netherlands. As for why, that's another story still being written. All I know is that this time, I'm clear about where I'm setting out from.