Blog - Hiruja Edurapola

🧑🏽‍💻 My Coding Career

I've been coding for about 7 years now. I'm a front-end web and web app developer now. I'm also in the fields of game development, software development, and AI and ML. In this article, I will explain how I became who I am today in the coding field.

Hello World

In 2018 when I was in third grade (8 years old) my uncle brought me an Arduino Uno board along with a few LED bulbs. He taught me some basic stuff on how you can set the value "HIGH" and "LOW" in order to light the LED. I first started Arduino coding using PictoBlox.

After he left, I began experimenting with different numbers of LEDs and different patterns. Although this was my first time coding, I had previously experimented with LEDs, motors, and batteries which were brought by my grandmother (mother's mother).

Then I discovered Scratch. I started off with projects where the sprites danced to music. I made a lot of projects like that. Then I started making games and other projects using Scratch, specifically animated stories. Later in the 2019–2020 period, I fell in love with the pen feature in Scratch. I used to do complex and beautiful animations with pen and publish it on the Scratch website. All the birthday wishes for my family members were now based on a Scratch pen project.

In 2019 I created a YouTube channel called "Video Hiruja" (later changed to Hiruja Studios, before being discontinued due to starting the new channel). I posted fairy tale–inspired stories animated inside Scratch, and voice-overed by me and my sister in the channel. It got about 50 subscribers, mostly family members and relatives.

Discovering Web Development

In 2021, when I was in the 6th Grade (11 years old), my father signed me up for an online web development course. It was during the COVID-19 quarantine period, so I had already started using the computer more often. The first day was really interesting to me. I learned about the basics and how to add text to a webpage.

After the class, I experimented with the things I had already learned. Eventually, I got better and better at web development while doing the course, and at a certain point, I remember, I had trouble sharing my assignment on the screen. When I told the lecturer of the course about it, he said

"No need to share. The chances of Hiruja getting an error is very rare."

This was a really good motivation that I still remember today even after 5 years. After and during the course, I spent most of the time recreating/reverse-engineering popular websites like Apple.

The Next Steps

After the web development course, I was qualified to take the game development course from the same lecturer. I learned C# with Unity 2D game development. I created many games during the course but dropped out without going to the 3D stage of the course.

After that, all of my other knowledge is self-taught. I was only working as a front-end web developer until 2023. I made a lot of websites and web apps during the time. They are also linked at the end of the article.

In 2024, I took Harvard University's CS50 Python course. Now I'm a bit familiar with Python as well. And in 2025 I again started to learn Unity 3D game development with C#. I also learned a few frameworks like React and Tailwind. Although I prefer writing in vanilla HTML, CSS, and JS.

Projects

One of the first major projects that I can remember was made in 2019 when I was in the 4th Grade. I made a Bluetooth-controlled car using Arduino.

In 2022, after the lockdown, I presented my Smart Dustbin Concept at the school's science exhibition. A dustbin controlled with an Arduino controller with an ultrasonic sensor and a servo motor which can detect if there is a human in front of it and automatically open/close the lid.

Later in 2024, I again presented my Parental Control app at the school's science exhibition. A Python app which periodically takes screenshots of the child's computer screen, so parents can see what their children are up to. This is the time I learned and experimented with Python libraries like Flask and this is when I learned how Python can be used for backend web development.

In 2024 I participated in an inter-school programming competition held by Prince of Wales College Moratuwa. I won the first place in the Python programming category. This was my first noticeable win in the programming section (not web development).

Also in late 2024, I participated in a web development competition held by Royal College - Colombo. I also won the first place in the junior category. This is the time I learned about React and complex web animation technologies. As a component for the web design here, I also came up with a concept of a day-night cycle in HTML using Apple's dynamic wallpaper/image files (.heic).

Apart from those, most of my projects are listed in my GitHub profile and some are also in the end of this article.