BenTejas

Waterloo, Ontario

Full-stack developer with a frontend-first mindset.

View my work Play the labs

01Client workElliott Promotional Products
02This site
03Personal toolTurner Mail

01Selected work

A few things I’ve shipped recently, from client builds to tools I made for myself.

01Projects

Projects

Client builds, personal tools, and a game or two still in progress.

01
Elliott Promotional Products
Client website for a promotional products company: browsable product catalogue, quote requests, and a clear path through their business services.
Client work
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
02
This site
Astro with React islands, a hand-rolled WebGL shader background, zero JavaScript on most pages, and a set of playable browser experiments in the Labs.
- Astro
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
Visit site (opens in a new tab)Source (opens in a new tab)
03
Turner Mail
Self-hosted email client built as a personal alternative to Gmail. Talks to a real IMAP/SMTP account with reading, composing, replying, forwarding, starring and trashing, organised into tabbed inbox views.
Personal tool
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- TypeScript
- Docker
04
Jarvis
Personal voice assistant built around a living 3D orb that listens for its name. Speech is transcribed on the device, replies stream from an LLM and are spoken aloud sentence by sentence, and it can set alarms or change its own colours on request.
Personal tool
- TypeScript
- React
- Three.js
- AI SDK
- Bun
05
Ember Outpost
The game those mobile ads promise and never deliver, minus the ads. Chop wood with orbiting axes, turn logs into firewood, serve the queue of customers and spend the takings to grow a frozen camp. 3D in the browser on three.js's WebGPU renderer.
In development
- TypeScript
- React
- Three.js
- Vite

02Labs

Things to play with

Small browser experiments: physics, cellular automata, falling blocks, a maze in the dark, an arena shooter through six ages of history, and a pencil company with Fortune 500 ambitions. Most are a single canvas and a tight render loop; one is an economy that runs for days. No installs, no accounts, no server doing the work. Pick one.

Lead Time

Turn one pencil into a Fortune 500 company.

React
Price-elastic demand
Offline catch-up
Code-drawn pixel art

Grains

A falling-sand sandbox with secrets in it.

Cellular automata
ImageData
Discovery log

Stack

Falling blocks, done properly.

Canvas 2D
SRS rotation
7-bag randomiser

Upstream

Get a rubber duck from the sewer to the bath.

Canvas 2D
Growing-tree mazes
Fog of war

Arms Race

From a thrown rock to a laser, one round at a time.

Canvas 2D
Wave director
Swept collisions

03Blog

Writing

EngineeringApr 28, 20265 min read
Building Maintainable Frontend Systems
What actually breaks at scale — and how to design frontend systems that survive real-world pressure.

04About

A bit about me

I’m a full-stack developer with a frontend-first mindset, focused on crafting modern digital experiences that feel polished, intuitive, and technically robust. I enjoy building products that sit at the intersection of design, engineering, and emerging AI workflows.

Experience

August 2024 – Present
Full-Stack Developer · Adpharm
Building modern web applications and internal tools in a fast-paced digital and pharmaceutical marketing environment. My work spans frontend development, backend integrations, data-driven experiences, and AI-assisted product features, with a strong focus on performant, maintainable systems.
May 2021 – April 2024
Website Project Coordinator · University of Windsor
Supported website initiatives across university departments, coordinating content, improving user-facing experiences, and maintaining web properties with consistency, accessibility, and usability in mind.