Arta Kjato on Web Development and Building Vari

From tech recruitment to writing her first lines of code — for Arta Kjato, the move into development felt like a natural next step. At Technigo, she’s gone from building her very first web page to creating Vari, a platform that cuts through the noise and helps aspiring developers navigate their way into tech with more clarity and confidence. We spoke to her about her journey into coding, her passion for tech-for-good, and the thinking behind building something genuinely useful in a space that can often feel overwhelming.

Tell us a bit about yourself – what made you get into coding? What's your previous background?

Code is the language of the future - and apparently also the language of my daughter, so I had to get the scoop. There was already a curiosity bug somewhere in the background: I was around students pushing for a more modern CS education, I showed up at the very first Women in Tech assembly in Macedonia almost ten years ago, and then somehow ended up in tech recruitment in Sweden. At some point I stopped calling it coincidence. Life was clearly trying to tell me something - very gently, but very persistently. So, I listened.

What drew you to Technigo?

I was looking for an inclusive environment - and Technigo kept coming up. Language, ability, gender - it genuinely reflects what the tech industry should look like, not just what it currently does. 

That mattered to me. I didn't just want to learn to code, I wanted to learn it somewhere that felt like it was built for people like me too.

What has been your favourite part of the programme so far?

This might sound silly, but as someone who had never written a single line of code before -learning HTML and CSS and seeing my very first web page come to life completely blew me away.  That moment was it for me. Everything after that has been an add-on - some more complex, some mysterious, some just delightfully weird - but equally delicious.

What’s the idea behind your final project Vari? Tell us about it!

I wanted to build something actually useful. I'm a bit obsessed with tech-for-good projects, so from the start I knew I wanted Vari to serve as a hub - a calm, structured place in what is otherwise an overwhelming sea of information. Career changing is genuinely complex, and even with AI throwing answers at you from every direction, it can feel like more noise than clarity. 

Career changing is genuinely complex, and even with AI throwing answers at you from every direction, it can feel like more noise than clarity. 

Vari is my attempt to cut through that - to make exploring a career in tech feel approachable rather than terrifying. Helpful, not overwhelming. That was the whole point.

How did you approach building Vari, and what technologies did you use?

Honestly? The wishes and the execution are very different things - I learned that quickly! I redesigned Vari about three times. When you're building something with a strong visual identity, you have to constantly juggle accessibility, responsiveness across all screen sizes, and design consistency all at once. That can cause quite the headache when you're aiming for something that feels uniform and intentional. 

But I got there! Vari is built on everything we learned during the programme - React, TypeScript and Vite on the frontend, with Tailwind CSS for styling and Zustand for state management. 

On the backend it's Node.js and Express, also in TypeScript. Full TypeScript across the stack, which I'm quietly proud of.

What’s one thing you’re especially proud of?

That people actually like Vari and find it useful. That means more to me than any technical achievement. You can build something technically impressive and have it land completely flat - so when someone uses Vari and gets it, that feels like the real win.

Vari is very much in its infant stage right now - there is so much more I want to build into it. 

But I'm proud that even at this early point, it already does what it set out to do. That's a good foundation to grow from.

Any tips for a future developer or anyone interested in starting to code?

Don't stop at the first obstacle - or the second, or the third! It can be a genuinely difficult and discouraging journey at times, and that's completely normal. 

The important thing is that you don't have to figure it all out alone. Use every tool available to you - friends, mentors, communities, AI, documentation, whatever works. 

There is no prize for struggling in silence. Just keep going, ask for help shamelessly, and trust that the confusion is temporary. The 'aha' moments make it all worth it.