About Me

Hi, I'm Jackson Tavares (Jet)—a high school student who loves building cool things with code. Whether it's a tool to make life easier, a fun project to explore an idea, or just something weird for the sake of learning—I'm always experimenting.

I built Made By Jet as a space to share my work, from web apps and dashboards to random side projects.

When I'm not coding, I'm probably out running, playing video games, or learning something new.

How I Got Started

I quickly developed an obsession with coding. Playing games had always fascinated me, and I began wondering how they were actually created. So, I searched 'What's the best programming language?', and that's where it all began. May 21, 2021, marks the start of my coding journey—the first entry in my paper trail.

I landed on Python and decided to dive in with a freeCodeCamp tutorial. I started by building basic Discord bots, which gave me my first taste of programming logic and problem-solving. Then came the "I'm going to make a video game" phase. I picked up C++, quickly realized it wasn't as easy as I thought, and ran straight back to Python.

That detour taught me an important lesson—sometimes simplicity wins. From there, I kept experimenting, learning, and pushing myself to build bigger and better projects (mainly discord bots).

VALcord

From September 2022 to December 2024, VALcord was my main project—and one of the most ambitious ones I've worked on. It started as a simple Discord bot for tracking Valorant stats, but quickly grew into a full-featured tool with match analysis, leaderboards, and performance tracking.

After launching version 1, I set out to rebuild VALcord from the ground up, focusing on efficiency and scalability with plans to eventually make it profitable. However, by 2024, I had a realization—while VALcord was a valuable learning experience, maintaining it required more time and effort than it could sustain financially.

Ultimately, I made the tough decision to discontinue VALcord, but the process taught me valuable lessons about scaling projects, building for users, and balancing passion with practicality.

The Present/Future

After wrapping up VALcord, I shifted my focus to new challenges and opportunities. I began building Made By Jet, diving deeper into JavaScript and learning frameworks like Next.js.

My goal is to keep creating, learning, and experimenting—building projects that push me to grow as a developer.