WHO the hell are we?

The usage of the word "we", "us", "our team", "myfonttyper" and "me", refers to the team behi- nah just kidding.

This is everything but a serious page. We want to tell you guys the exact story of how we have gotten to this point, without any kind of filters. No professionalism, these pages are not made for professionalism, they are there for realism, they are there to show the end-user whom they trust there data to. So, again. WHO THE HELL ARE WE?

Amount of people

We are a, well, single person company. I am running myFonttyper by myself. Security, Authentication, API configuration, Frontend and Backend Development, Linux Administration, Marketing, and documentation aswell as CI/CD, atleast for this platform, is made by a single person, me.

I am...

...an 18 year old boy from Germany, who is still going to school. I was born from Germany, but my Parents are from Türkiye, and well, I have fallen in love with programming from the young age of 14. Back then stuff worked a little different though, atleast it did for me. Back then I had a slow laptop, which did not really run properly, lagged a lot, and it made me rage a lot, however, my go-to programming language was (and still is [unfortunately]) JavaScript.

Programming, as mentioned, started when I was 14, using JavaScript. During the Corona Phase, I had nothing to do. For some, the time was a horror, many lost their friends, families, or their hopes and dreams, but atleast for me, it was when I actually started living. During the break, I started visiting a familiar site, some of you might know, called Discord, to improve my English ever so slightly. The reason for that, was back then, I just could not speak a proper sentence. Chatting with people improved it drastically though!

However, whilst chatting with people, there always was something I always saw, there were a lot of "Discord-Bots". I wondered, what are they, how are they made, from whom are they made, and, can I make one myself? Keep in mind, I had no idea of programming, like, ever. I did not know where to begin, so I just googled. I had to download this, and that. I was scared to install a Virus, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I just kept downloading what Google told me.

A few days pass, and I find myself watching tutorials on how to code a discord bot. Token configurations were complete, and I just, you know, like every new developer copied everything that the tutor told me in their videos. Understanding anything? No. Just brainless copying. That however is an issue, because programmers are not really programming, we are solving problems, and you cannot solve a problem, if you do not even know what the topic is. So, like any other stubborn kid, I left programming, I hated error messages. And there were too many.

After many months, I thought about programming again. While I was still 14, I had understood more about my prior mistakes. So I started slowly. I began with a github repo, named "30 Days of Javascript", it probably is still online however not maintained anymore. These 30 days, were the days that drastically changed my life. Learning every small detail about JavaScript helped me to understand that I understood nothing. It was the eye opener I needed. This was during the Summer break, and I swore to myself, that by the end of the Summer, I will have finished this course, and understood everything. And oh man, I did.

The best thing I ever did after finishing this tutorial, was not starting another one.

Because the upcoming 1-2 years, was solely focused on a single project alone. This was the Project that would give me a foothold amongst every other beginner. Coding this project helped me to understand multiple concepts, multiple systems and mechanisms, it was the project that I needed to get started.

It was not a todo app, no.

Shoot for the stars, they said. I sure did.

I am not only a programmer, but also an Artist. I draw a lot in my free time, and back then, I did even more drawing. Finding a website to post these drawings always seemed a little difficult to me though, so I did not know what to do. But then I remembered, I am a programmer, lemme do it myself. So I started programming.

The first thing I learn was which website to go to when I needed help, or how to google were all things I had to learn. Starting a new project is always fun, and I was pretty fast. The very first thing was programming a UI.

I mean, it is not logical, but thats what I started with.

Finishing the UI was a breeze, as it was the worse UI in human history, but it looked good to my 15 year old eyes. Now however, I had to add a login and register system, because, all websites have one dont they? But, I did not know how. Using JavaScript and localStorage, I taped together a broken register system. Yes, localStorage, meaning after you register the data is stored on your device, with which it then verifies if that is you. Not very secure, right? True, and thats what I realized after a while aswell, so I stopped for a little bit.

Chat apps. How do they work? Discord, how does it work? Thats what I wondered. I started to code my own chat app, this time, I learned backend coding using ExpressJS, and Sockets, and how to handle them properly. After I finished the tutorial though, I had one question; "How do I store these messages?". I looked in the comments with someone with the exact same question, and a single reply. The reply said something along the lines of "You need to use an external database, like MongoDB or something.", after which, it all went uphill for me.

The very first thing I did is learn MongoDB. Learning data structures, and queries was really a big headache for me, but after I finally configured it with my socket project, I finally could have said, that chats are now also stored. Using Heroku (back then with the free tier), I uploaded it to the web and me and my family tried it out, worked like a fricking charm.

The upcoming year was the best learning phase of my life. I implemented the login and register system properly, using Gmail verification with google. I added a better UI, scraping the old UI and basically re-programming the whole website. It really is a good feeling when you look at your old code and think to yourself "Man, how bad is this?", because you know, that you have improved, you have learned.

File Uploads, Administrator Roles, Real-Time Chat Apps, Direct Messaging & Chat Rooms, Profile Picture and File Handling. Uploading Arts, adding descriptions, adding tags (for better search querying), adding titles, even an NSFW filter, all was added. But I wanted more. Friend Requests, Blocks, Followers, Notifications when someone texts you, or likes one of your art works, Upvote and Downvote system for Artworks, Commenting under artworks, all was programmed from my 16 year old mind. But even then I did not stop.

I added, what I would still consider one of the best things I have ever coded, into my project. A course creator. With this, you could create your own course for Artists. Adding elements such as text, blocks, or Images. Changing the borders or backgrounds from any items. Modifying the fonts and their colors, aligning them to the left are right. Everything was possible. But, they cannot be free only, can they? So I started learning Stripe. Stripe is the Goliath or Payment providers (atleast in my eyes). Learning it was really a breeze, and I finally also added a payment mechanism for users. But, whilst were at it, I also added a Subscription mechanism, with which users can Subscripe to the website for 5$ a month, to get more perks. Everything seemed so, perfect.

But then, I could not upload it. I was young, and I did not want to ask my parents for any cash, well, I did not even have a bank account myself. My Parents have ALWAYS supported me, and wanted to help me where they can, but I rejected. Call it stupidity, I would not deny. So I stopped coding, because I finished everything, there was nothing to learn for me, it was done. But what now?

Cyber Security! Yes, a new capital, lets go.

Ever wondered how people hack? No? Well I did. I learned the bits and everything that there is, starting from PicoCTF and finishing with the TryHackMe, level 14 Badge (not really a flex). Finishing over 100 rooms in TryHackMe, really gave me a good understanding of how websites can be easily exploited, and how servers can be so vulnerable.

I did not attempt to hack a server though, never. Instead of that, I thought about how to secure a server, a website, and everything. But after a while, even that got boring.

I was now 17 year old, still unemployed, but going to college, 2 more years, and then to University, but I have nothing to show. No website, or App, nothing. Summer Break was 2 weeks away, and I was doing Homework for my History lesson. The teacher was really annoying and always wanted everything Handwritten, but I did not want that.

Then I realized something, I should have realized ages ago... I am still a programmer, let me do it myself!

SO I DID. That story is exactly how myFonttyper made, and Mrs. Hens, maybe you do not know it, but you actually helped a lot in this. The annoying handwriting and everything, was a pain, so I changed it. myFonttyper allows you to just write the letters, the rest you type. Exactly how I wanted it.

I programmed the first prototype over the week-end. Just a static page, hosted on netlify. Matter a fact, you can still access it; here. It is old, but gold. If you do not like the new version, and want to stay on the static site/side, you are welcome to do so.

Keep in mind, the first version looked a lot worse than this though. But it was the use-case that was important, not the UI, so the very next day, I showed that to my friends, and they all loved it. It just sucks, that the Summer Break is next week. I wish I started it sooner, but then I realized, that during the Summer Break, I could just improve it so much, that all of my friends could use it next year.

During the Summer Holidays, I did not work on the website, no. I learned Flutter, and programmed the whole thing in App-Format. After going back to Germany I published it, (after testing 70+ other apps for 14~ days to get my app released on Google Play Store). It took 3 months to publish it on Google Play, 9 months for Apple, but it does not matter.