Before the AWS microservices, before the cloud-native architecture, before even the fancy CI/CD pipelines⊠there was the taco stand.
Back in 2003, my tĂa needed a way to track her inventory for her taqueria. She had a spreadsheet, but it was a mess. So, I said, "TĂa, leave it to me." I fired up my ancient Dell, booted up Visual Basic (yes, I know, I know), and started coding.
That first app? It was spaghetti code at its finest. I had a bug where every time you added "salsa verde" to the inventory, it would somehow duplicate the entire order for "salsa roja." We ended up with way too much salsa roja that week. But you know what? It worked. It was functional. It solved the problem.
That first code taught me that tech is a tool for community. It's not about the perfect architecture or the latest framework. It's about solving real problems for real people. And sometimes, that means shipping something a little messy, but functional.
So here's to the first code, the salsa bug, and the tĂa who taught me that the best solutions come from the heart (and a little bit of spaghetti code).