About Me
Hi, my name is Eric Philippot, and I'm building my journey into the world of web and game development. I grew up in a small town outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where I spent most of my childhood playing on the dairy farm building dreams of another kind. I relied on my imagination and love of causing chaos towards my siblings.
Sports, backyard adventures, and the now classic games were my go-to activities. Computers weren't really part of my early years—our school had a small program, but none of the courses were very inspiring at the time. Basic office skills and research were the only available. There was times where I was lucky enough to visit a friend or family member that had one. But all I wanted to do was to play the games. 😅
When my brother went to college, he was gifted a PC and the best days were when he brought his college computer home during breaks. I spent hours on that thing, learning how it worked and discovering games like Dune 2000, Civilization, StarCraft, and The Sims (rosebud, motherlode 😏). This sparked a real interest in tech for me. When I graduated in 2005, my dad bought me my own laptop, and that’s when my tech journey truly began.
Fast forward to 2011, I started working at Party City. In just two years, I moved up four positions and became an operations manager. In 2016, I met an employee who studied game development. Intrigued, I asked him if it was hard to learn, he told me not really, just to watch out for the infinite loop of death. My drive was born that day. I found a site called Udemy, and an instructor that was part of a company called Devslopes. After a few months with them I was still lost. My big break came when I found GameDev.tv and GameDevHQ
With their explanations, I felt like I could do anything. I took part in game jams and let my creativity soar. But just making games wasn't enough. I wanted to understand the tech behind the scenes, behind multiplayer and how game updates and patches worked. No one really ever explained how. This curiosity led me to web development in 2019. I dove deep into web development to learn more on how servers work, what's the best practices are, and much more with the help of Zero To Mastery and Academind.
Since then, I’ve spent my free time learning and building. I’ve set up basic NodeJS servers with a reverse proxy using NGINX, created websites with WordPress, configured Apache servers on a Raspberry Pi , and manage a Shopify site for a client. I dove deep into React, Redux, and Firebase, building an ecommerce site while honing my skills in state management and SPAs. I have been lucky to learn from GameDevHQ, built some amazing things that I never thought I could do.
While I’m still on this journey and have a lot to learn, I’m proud of how far I’ve come. I built this site following nothing but the documentation, I have took on challenges that pushed me past my level of comfort and I made many friends along the way. There are great people in the tech industry and I don't think I would be here now without them. People like my instructors, Andrei Neagoie or Maximilian Schwarzmüller and Manuel Lorenz. Or inspirations like Cassidy Williams, Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski. I have learned so much from them throughout my journey. So thank you! 😊