About me

Hi! I'm Chensheng Xu, a passionate self-starter.

My journey of web-development started out of interests and curiosity in 2022. While building websites and webshops for my business with Saas platforms, I became curious and interested in how websites are developed. I began learning full-stack JavaScript and various frameworks on the side with an open-source curriculum called The Odin Project, including HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and React.js, etc, and have since implemented these skills and frameworks in a number of personal projects.

My most recent personal project Odinbook was a full-stack MERN Facebook-clone website developed with RESTful API first under TDD. The frontend was built with Next13.js, deployed on Railway.

I am also actively contributing to open-source projects where team collaborations and communications are crucial in the process. By contributing to projects like a11y features and fixes for The Odin Project, building front-end Vue.js components and improving a11y features for activist, and submitting PRs of front-end features and bugs for Electricity Maps, have made me a better developer with ever growing skill sets and experiences.

A few years back, I started my online business xuleathers during university out of passion, and continued the entrepreneurship into a full-time business after graduated from University of Toronto after 2018. My main focus was hand-making high-end custom-ordered leather products for my clients in the world. From women's handbags in alligator skin to men's bi-fold wallets in natural veg-tan leathers, I've made a lot of clients happy with custom-orders from ideas and sketches or classic iconic pieces.

My experience as an entrepreneur has honed my critical thinking and problem-solving skills, while my journey into web development has given me a deeper understanding of software engineering principles and the ability to design and build complex web applications. I am eager to continue learning and adapting to the ever-evolving landscape of web development, and am excited to contribute my skills and knowledge to the industry's efforts to design, program, and provide amazing services for everyone.

Here is a copy of my resume. (PDF, 75Kb)

Sports and nature are my interests too. I love to hike in nature and explore the landscape and beautiful wildlife (sadly Toronto does not have a lot of amazing hiking sites). I am a certified PADI Divemaster and I absolutely love the amazingly diversified sea life. For the past year I have been playing Badminton at out local community center, coaching my partner and I am proud that now she plays much better than she initially started.