About Wataru Ito

Hi, I'm Wataru Ito, a frontend engineer, husband and dad. I make art in my spare time.

I came to the United States from Japan to study art. After art school, I worked in web design and development before moving into frontend engineering. I've built data-heavy applications for businesses in cybersecurity and data science. I enjoy figuring out how an interface should look and how the code behind it should work.

I built a real-time communication app using WebSockets and jQuery, then ported it to React. In my jQuery days, I worked with a backend engineer to design an in-house JavaScript bundling system and cut an application's load time from 13 seconds to under three. I've worked on cybersecurity interfaces where I loaded more than 10,000 data entities from multiple endpoints, aggregated and normalized them on the fly, and displayed their relationships in a graph.

I've converted an entire React app from Flow to TypeScript and migrated an app from an in-house React framework to Next.js. I've moved an app from one Bootstrap-based framework to another, then to Tailwind CSS. During these migrations, I kept developing and shipping new features for the business team. I love designing apps that make things simpler for users and software architectures that work at scale.

I started out as a web designer, wrestling with table layouts from Fireworks (R.I.P.) and Dreamweaver. I dealt with transparent GIFs, one-pixel rows and columns, and mysterious colspan and rowspan values. Then I discovered Jeffrey Zeldman and became a convert to web standards. I've loved working with HTML and CSS ever since.

At an Adobe conference, I attended a talk by Nicholas C. Zakas on JavaScript optimization. Listening to him, I began to see a connection with my experiments in Java at art school, where I'd taken an interest in automata. I've forgotten most of the Java syntax. After that talk, I took a more structured approach to frontend development and moved into engineering. I don't spend my working days choosing typefaces or adjusting kerning anymore, but I love typography.

I read a lot. In high school, I read more than 300 books a year, and I was enough of a geek to keep a list of the titles. I read about the history of bookkeeping and the intelligence of octopuses, American history and the history of yakisoba. I enjoy the Jack Reacher novels and Andy Weir's books. Stephen Jay Gould is one of my favorite science writers, and I love Yasunori Nomura's books about the universe.

I'd like to tackle more demanding fiction by writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Bernhard, but as a sleep-deprived dad of two, I haven't worked up to it. I'm waiting for the seventh Red Rising book, the fourth Baru Cormorant book, and a follow-up to Blindsight and Echopraxia. After all that waiting, I'm wary of starting A Song of Ice and Fire.

I studied art and consider myself an artist, though I struggle to find enough uninterrupted time to work on it. I hope to share some of that work on this site. In the meantime, I share my experiments with technology.

I love the work of Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Francis Bacon, Jenny Saville, Diego Velázquez, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne. My list of favorites includes Mark Grotjahn, Marcel Duchamp, Gerhard Richter, Isamu Noguchi, Rudolf Stingel, Urs Fischer, Justin Bower, Sarah Morris, Mark Bradford, Julian Opie, Lu Cong, Heimo Zobernig, Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian and Mark Rothko. I love Alison Van Pelt's work, including her beautiful frames. And I can't leave out Barnett Newman. I love straight lines!

I started this site because I wanted a place to collect my thoughts and keep a record of what I make and learn in my work, family life and art. I write about questions I encounter in JavaScript and React, as well as family life and trips to Japan with my kids. I can follow an interest in art or programming, or write about something from my day, without needing to connect it all.

I build small projects around things I need or want to try. I began working on browser-based image tools while making a birthday poster for my child. After using sticker charts with my kids, I made a printable habit tracker for adults. I make word and number games and use code to experiment with color and movement. I like seeing what I can fit into a single web page and sharing it for others to use or play with.

I use AI for help with coding and editing, including checking my English grammar. I develop my ideas and write in English, though it isn't my first language. I decide what to publish and take responsibility for it.

I write in a personal capacity and speak for myself, not for anyone else or any organization.