2023 was a rollercoaster of learning, growth, and maybe a few facepalms along the way. I've experienced various ups and downs, embarked on new adventures, and learned valuable lessons along the way.
I've kept things brief and in bullet points because explaining the reasons behind some decisions would require another blog post.
All opinions are mine and they could change as I gain more experience and learn new things. This post is not advice or any sort of guide but just personal reflection.
Before getting into the details, I want to take a moment to reflect on a few things.
My Top 3 Good Decisions This Year
- Diving deep into the world of Vercel & Next.js
- Establishing a development > deployment flow, & using preview branches.
- Switching to a dual-OS workflow, using both my Windows Desktop & Macbooks.
My Top 3 Mistakes This Year
- I explored a lot of new technologies this year, which was exciting but sometimes scattered my focus. I've learned to be more discerning about which tools align with my long-term goals.
- Joining community college, which ended up being a waste of time.
- Not doing enough competitive programming.
Languages Review
Here are the programming languages I've explored and used over time.
TypeScript
It's official – I'm on team Typescript! While I was initially hesitant about optional typing, I quickly came to embrace it. Typescript transformed my development workflow, making it:
- Predictable: No more confuzzlement over unexpected type errors at buildtime. Saves me hours of debugging.
- Reliable: With type safety baked in, I can refactor code without worrying, knowing that typescript has my back.
- Fun: Yeah, fun! The tooling and autocompletion makes development much faster since Copilots have type context!
TypeScript's strong community and excellent documentation have been invaluable resources. In 2024, I'm excited to deepen my TypeScript expertise and explore advanced features like generics and decorators.
Go
- I really appreciate it's simplicity and speed.
- Seems to have one of the most robust standard libraries.
- Surprisingly vast ecosystem.
- I'm planning to experiment with it for my backend projects!
Python
- Python's "batteries included" philosophy means its standard library is full of modules for almost any task, saving me time and effort.
Goals for 2024
- Build and deploy a production Next.js app from scratch.
- Contribute to open source projects, notably Next.js apps.
- Learn more about animations & interactivity on the web.
- Start working out every day.
- Make some friends.
- Learn more about machine learning.
- Keep this blog alive with at least one new post per month.
- Achieve self-dependence.
- Make my parents proud.
And that’s a wrap. Thanks for sticking with me til the end. Here’s the playlist I was listening to while writing this, if you're interested!
I’ll wrap up this post with a quote by Anthony Bourdain:
Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, and moribund.
Wishing everyone the best for the upcoming year. Cheers.
¹: My two laptops are a 13-inch M1 MacBook Air & a Intel i9 MacBook Pro, 15-inch.
²: todo
