maioli.dev

maioli.dev was born from the desire to create something beyond a traditional portfolio.

I needed a space to present my projects and professional journey, but I did not want it to become just a collection of cards, technologies, and GitHub links.

I wanted the website itself to be a project.

A place where I could bring together engineering, content, and creativity while experimenting with ideas that would hardly make sense on a conventional corporate website.

A portfolio with personality

Developer portfolios usually follow a fairly similar structure.

That is not necessarily a problem. When someone is looking for professional information, clarity matters more than surprise.

But I believe there is room for both.

That is why maioli.dev aims to keep information easy to find while adding a layer of personality to the experience.

One way I found to do that was through themes inspired by the superhero universe.

Visitors can completely change the visual identity of the site by choosing different characters and universes.

It is not a necessary feature.

And that is exactly why I like it.

It exists because software can have personality too.

A little chaos

After the themes came another question:

what if some characters could interfere with the website itself?

That is how the Chaos Engine was born.

Some themes do more than change colors. They can trigger small events in the interface.

Thanos can make elements disappear.

Loki can turn the page into a small visual prank.

Doctor Doom and Magneto also have their own ways of interfering with the experience.

These details are deliberately unnecessary for the portfolio's main function, but they are important to what I wanted it to communicate.

Not every line of code has to exist only to solve a business need.

Sometimes it can exist simply to create a memorable experience.

Content remains the protagonist

There is, however, an important rule behind these experiences:

the playfulness must never get in the way of the content.

Regardless of the selected theme or the effect happening on screen, projects, articles, and information must remain accessible and understandable.

That concern ended up influencing several decisions throughout development.

The effects are a layer on top of the website, not the reason it exists.

The personality can change.

The content must remain.

The same story in three languages

Another important decision was not to treat additional languages as simple translations added later.

maioli.dev was designed to present its content in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

Projects, institutional pages, and navigation have their corresponding localized versions.

This is particularly important for a professional portfolio.

The internet removes many of the geographical boundaries of a career in technology. If the work can reach people in different countries, the content should be prepared for that as well.

Every project has a story

GitHub remains the best place for anyone who wants to explore the code behind each project.

This website has a different purpose.

Here, I want to explain why the projects exist.

What problem was I trying to solve?

What did I learn while building that solution?

Which decisions changed during development?

And why does that project still deserve a place in my portfolio?

That is why projects are presented as short stories, while their repositories remain available for anyone interested in exploring the technical side.

The portfolio itself is also a project

Perhaps this is the characteristic that best defines maioli.dev.

I do not see the website only as the place where my projects are presented.

It is also one of them.

New projects can be added to the portfolio.

New articles can be written.

The themes can evolve.

New experiences can appear.

Some ideas will probably be discarded along the way.

And that is fine.

Because this website was not created to be a permanent snapshot of my career.

It was created to evolve alongside it.