I am AJTheDev.

Something most people don't know about me: I basically grew up in an internet café. Didn't live there, but I had a sweet deal on internet time whilst not having a personal computer at home.

One day I'd just finished buying "Credits" — in-game currency for Habbo Hotel — and realised spending £3 on fake money for a game I wouldn't play forever was madness. So I did what any resourceful 12-year-old would do: I looked into hacking the game for free credits.

Probably illegal? Yeah. Did I succeed? Not exactly. I figured out how to inject session IDs, but that required stealing user data and I'm no blackhat. What I did gain was something more valuable: a basic understanding of code. It just clicked. Code read like English to me.

That led me to recreating my own private version of the game. PHP, SQL databases, tweaking everything to benefit myself. By my 14th birthday, me and a small team had successfully recreated the entire game. We got into trouble for copyright infringement later — had to stay away for two years — but the experience lit a fire that never went out.

When the copyright drama forced me to step back, I didn't stop creating — I just channelled it differently.

I studied music and media while staying active with a piano and whatever camera phone I could get my hands on. Shot amateur footage with friends — buses, skating around IKEA, just being teenagers. Wanted to make it look good, so I taught myself video editing, titles, transitions, Photoshop artifacts.

Lost access to my first YouTube channel when Google bought them out. Great for people wanting to monetise, not so great for everyday users just trying to share their work.

Gaming got serious on Xbox 360. Got into online groups with sponsorships from Machinima and Kontroller Freaks. Even went head-to-head with early FaZe clan in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. We lost, obviously — but came 2nd overall and had a nice chat with the team after. That made me want to record gameplay for YouTube like everyone else was starting to do, back before money was even part of the equation.

Web development paid the bills from 2007 to 2020. Thirteen years of building sites, apps, and systems for anyone who needed them.

Started with local businesses, grew to working with household names. BBC, Netflix, Channel 4, Nestlé, Hilton — the logos on my portfolio got progressively more impressive, but the work stayed the same: understand what people need, build it properly, deliver on time.

Self-taught the entire way. While everyone else was studying computers at school, I was already ahead — so I took music and media instead. No regrets. The creativity from those years feeds into everything I build now.

500+ apps and websites. 133 satisfied clients. Not bad for someone who learned to code trying to cheat at a virtual hotel game.

The last five years changed everything. Python APIs, AI pipelines, FiveM scripts. I switch niches like most people switch tabs — fast and without losing context.

FiveM happened because I'm still a gamer at heart. GTA roleplay servers needed scripts, I knew how to code, the maths was simple. Seven years later I'm a QBCore specialist serving servers worldwide.

AI happened because it was obviously the future. Started with basic automation, moved into N8N workflows, ComfyUI pipelines, RAG systems, text-to-speech. I scout Hugging Face weekly for cutting-edge models. When something new drops, I'm usually one of the first to integrate it.

The common thread? I build things that actually work. Not impressive demos that gather dust. Not over-engineered solutions looking for problems. Practical tools that solve real issues for real people.