Hi, my name is Catalin Rosu but all my friends call me Red. I'm the guy behind catalin.red where I like to write about front-end development stuff, more or less. Also, I'm working as a web designer, developer and an avid amateur gamer for a company called Caphyon. Yeah, gamer, because we're playing lots of FIFA there.
How did you get started in web development? What is your background?
Ten years ago I think, I stumbled upon some freelance sites for designers and developers and I was instantly very interested in how this works. I then started to learn something useful to be able to make some pocket money and began playing with Photoshop and Illustrator. HTML, CSS and JS were the next step. I still remember my first ever logo project won on a freelance website. Oh, what times!
I do have a computer science degree, but I like to say that most of my knowledge comes from reading, blogging, and learning from those I've worked with along the time. On working and becoming a better designer/developer, I have this quote etched in my mind:
Beginners know how. Professionals know when. Masters know why.
What are you working on now?
Right now I'm working as a UX guy for AWR Cloud and from time to time I write stuff on my website. When I'm not doing none of these I work on improving my changing diapers skills.
What software do you use for your work?
In a random order:
- Sublime
- Git
- Adobe's Creative Cloud
- Chrome
- Notepad++
- ANT
- Grunt
- Slack
- Dropbox
- Thunderbird
- KeePass
- TurtoiseSVN
And what hardware?
I'm running on a i5 Windows machine, moving pixels on a 27" Dell monitor with a Logitech G5 mouse. Also, I'm listening my favorite music and podcasts with my Sennheiser headphones. And still doing research for an appropriate mechanical keyboard.
What is your ideal work environment?
The ideal work environment? Hmm, not sure I ever thought sincerely at this. In my case, I guess it's wherever I'm feeling conformable in order to write some lines of code. That may be at home, in the bed or while crossing the country by train, sitting on a tiny chair, at a tiny table.
Who are the creatives you admire most?
Oh, there's a lot of people I admire and most of times I'm overwhelmed on the amount of good stuff they're doing. Lots of smart people in the wild and always trying to catch up. Things are moving so fast in the web industry and you always need to stay up to date.