What I Work With at Keenthemes

I get asked this a lot, usually in interviews or a first call with a new client: which languages and frameworks do you use, and how good are you with them. Here’s the version I’d give in person.

Front-end

I work at a design template company, so front-end means something specific for me. I’m not building one app in one framework. I take an HTML template and integrate it into the major frameworks as starter projects for users, so whoever buys it can start from code that already runs in the stack they work in.

Vue, Angular, React, Ruby on Rails, and the rest of that list. Some are front-end frameworks, some come with their own server-rendered view layer, and the template has to sit properly in all of them. Intermediate at least, a bit better on the ones I’ve spent more time in.

That comes from porting the same design system into all of them and having to make each version behave the same way. You learn how a framework really handles structure, state, styling and its build tooling once you push past the basics.

I learned this before AI came along, so it was source code and documentation. Slower, but it stayed with me.

Back-end

Here I’m the system architect for the Keenthemes ecosystem. Two things that covers:

• keenthemes.com, the template marketplace where the products get sold and licensed.
• devs.keenthemes.com, the developer community and support system for the people using those products.

That runs from planning through building to deployment, and it stays mine after it ships.

Working both ends helps. Knowing how the templates get used shapes how I design what delivers them, and running the delivery side shows me where people get stuck with what we shipped.