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That’s my name in Glagolitic — the oldest known Slavic alphabet, created in the 9th century. I’m Atanas Atanasov, a backend developer based in Bulgaria.
What I do
I work primarily with PHP — Laravel and Symfony — and have been in web development for over a decade. Before the web, I was building Windows desktop apps, which is probably why I still feel something is missing when an app lives only in a browser.
I’m currently exploring React on the frontend after years of avoiding it. The honest verdict: it’s fine, but I still think about desktop. I have tested many Frontend frameworks and libraries, but none have convinced me to fully commit yet. I liked Vue then Svelte, but nothing felt right. Mobile app development landscape is also something I’m curious about, but haven’t found something that excites me yet. Flutter is not for me.
What I’m into right now
Learning Chinese. Not casually — I’m about 1,000 characters in and trying to get serious. The problem with Chinese is that it’s not just vocabulary and grammar: it’s radicals, tones, similar-looking characters, and muscle memory all layered on top of each other. Anki helps, but it doesn’t solve everything — which is why I built Anki Browser.
Building small tools. I have a short attention span for big ambitious projects, but I enjoy building focused tools that solve one real problem well. Anki Games is the most complete thing I’ve shipped recently. I have many local projects that I’m working on, but I haven’t published them yet.
Writing. This blog. I hope slowly getting better at finishing posts instead of just starting them.
Projects
- Anki Browser — a custom Anki browser and game engine built with React and AnkiConnect. Focused on drilling confusable Chinese characters.
Find me
If any of this sounds interesting, the /now page has what I’m currently focused on.