That mindset started before I ever wrote a line of code. My first paid work wasn't backend engineering, it was graphic and web design, building layouts and interfaces for local businesses back in Nepal. When I moved into software engineering, I didn't leave that instinct behind, I just pointed it at a different material, systems instead of pixels.

I'm inspired by Steve Jobs' idea of connecting the dots looking backward, you only see how the pieces fit once you've lived them, and design is the thread that connects mine. When I write code, I'm not just producing features, I'm architecting a system. I've never thought of myself as a raw coder, I've always been a design person first. For instance, when I write a piece of C# code, I'm not just aiming for clean, performant output, I'm reading the existing design of how the rest of the codebase is written, leaning into it, and improving it so the whole thing stays easy to scale or extend.