Igor Zapala
I'm a fullstack developer, based in Tokyo since 2018.
Ruby || Rails || JavaScript || HTML || CSS/SCSS
I'm a fullstack developer, based in Tokyo since 2018.
Ruby || Rails || JavaScript || HTML || CSS/SCSS
I'm Igor, originally from 🇵🇱 Poland, raised in 🇩🇪 Germany, and I’ve been living in 🇯🇵 Japan since 2018. Each year I find myself falling more in love with this country.
In 2024, I completed a full stack web development bootcamp at Le Wagon Tokyo 🗼. The 9-week intensive course ignited my passion for programming, and I've been fascinated by how a few lines of code can create endless possibilities, from interactive websites to data-driven applications. 👨💻
When I’m not scanning my code for that one missing comma, I’m discovering Japan through my camera’s viewfinder or searching the nearby second hand shops for treasures from my past.👾
Plans Tonight is the final project for Le Wagon Tokyo's 9-week intensive coding bootcamp.
This app is designed to reduce the headache of chosing a place to go out with friends. A user can initialize a plan by choosing a date and time, invite friends to vote for the mood, and alcohol type they prefer.
Based on these choices, the app will choose a place to go out.
This was a one week group project where we had to build an airbnb clone.
My team decided to simulate a place where space owners - from Cafés which have an empty wall to share up to professional galleries - could rent out their spaces to artists.
We came to the conclusion that, as an beginning artist without connections it's difficult to display art. Therefore the idea was born to create a space to encourage upcoming talents.
Inspired by a friend from Germany visiting Tokyo, I created this app to make searching for a place to eat in Tokyo more accessible for tourists.
This app scrapes the 楽天グルナビ page with the help of the Nokogiri gem in Rails, based on a location which the user enters in English, which automatically gets translated with the help of the DeepL API, and a food category.
The first version was running with geolocation, however the free geocoding API's limit the usage quite fast, why I decided to switch to a translation in real time to ensure the page is running at every request.
As a collector of video games, I wanted to create a place where I could keep track of my collection.
When browsing games at my local thrift stores, I found myself often in the situation where I wasn't sure if I own a game or not. Therefore, I decided to create
an application, where I could store the games I own, wishlist new games that I want to buy, and check which games I haven't played yet. On top of that I added some social
functions, such as adding reviews and rating games, which can be seen by all users.
One of my passions are old video games, the other one is videography. Additionally, since I moved to Japan, I haven't had many opportunities to speak German in my daily life. That's when I had the idea to combine all three interests into a single creative outlet: a YouTube channel.
I use the channel as a way to dig deeper into the topic of video games, researching their history and trying to understand what makes my favorite entertainment medium so special. I work on it whenever I have some free time and also see it as a kind of diary.