Christian Knoll

Web Designer, Front-End Developer. Papa of two boys. Pug, Scotch and Lego enthusiast. I should also mention my love of Tiramasu.

At first I thought it was too late in the game for me to switch careers from web designer to front-end developer in my late 30s, but since this industry changes so much and so fast, "any time you jump in is the best time" was what I was told. It wound up being great advice! It's a very satisfying career - almost every day you find a new challenge, and with it a feeling of accomplishment when you finally conquer it. I have developed a passion for the "holy trinity" of HTML/CSS/Javascript. And of course, jQuery.

Design is so objective, and quite often you are forced to make poor design decisions because it's what the client wants. People say "well then you did a poor job of explaining it to the client", but to those people I say you haven't met my clients.

The nature of ADHD is being unable to focus on certain things that your mind just doesn't want, but when certain things come along, we can jump in and hyperfocus on it like a laser beam. Web development definitely does that for me. I love staying up late by the monitor's glow, challenging myself and building things while I'm drinking coffee (or Scotch) and listening to music - getting "in the zone". Luckily the thing my mind has chosen to be passionate about is something I can make a living at, and without a college education! For this I consider myself very lucky. The hard work doesn't feel like hard work as much as it feels like I'm "leveling up". Getting smarter and better than I was the day before.

My interests before I had a family of my own were based arount travel and possibly living specific places abroad. But now that I have two wonderful (and sometimes difficult) boys, I look forward to sharing the world with them and watching them grow up - here, or wherever we happen to be.