Why I'm Building in Public From Now On

Imagine spending years mastering your craft. Building real software. Solving hard problems. Always learning, always improving. And then watching opportunities go to developers who aren't necessarily better than you — they're just easier to find.

That realization changed how I think about my career.

I'm Tabe Rickson, a full-stack developer based in Buea, Cameroon. For the last three years, I've been building software, breaking things, fixing them, and learning lessons no course or YouTube video could have taught me.

A few months ago, I asked myself a simple question: what actually makes one developer stand out?

At first I thought the answer was obvious. Maybe it's years of experience. Maybe it's writing cleaner code, or knowing every new framework the moment it drops. But the more I looked around, the more I noticed something uncomfortable: there are incredibly talented developers everywhere — people building products that solve real problems, creating things that genuinely deserve attention — and most of them stay unnoticed. Not because they aren't good. Because almost nobody knows what they're building.

And honestly, I realized I was becoming one of those developers. Hours writing code. Projects finished. New technologies learned. And very few people even knew I existed.

That's when I decided something had to change — not that I'd stop building, but that I'd stop building in silence.

Building in public, starting now

From today, I'm sharing what I'm actually working on: the mistakes, the lessons, the wins, the failures, all of it. Because you never know who might learn something from your journey, or who might discover an opportunity simply because they saw your work.

That decision is also what pushed me to finally build taberickson.com the way I actually wanted it — not another portfolio people visit once and forget.

What this site is actually for

I wanted a place where developers can actually learn something. A place where I share what I'm building, in real time, including the parts that don't work on the first try. A place where I answer real questions about software engineering, web development, AI, backend systems — and everything else I'm learning as I go, technical or not.

I believe the best way to grow — online or in a career — isn't by chasing attention. It's by creating value consistently, out loud, where people can actually find it.

This is just the beginning

If you're a developer, or you're trying to build a career in tech from anywhere in the world — including places people don't expect it from — I'd love for you to follow along. You'll find me here at taberickson.com, sharing the technical write-ups alongside the real, messier side of building a career: the motivation problems, the trade-offs nobody talks about, the honest version of what actually moves things forward.

Geography is not a ceiling.