Before 2022 closes out, for the first time in written form, I want to take a moment to reflect on the past year and also to look forward. A lot has been accomplished, both personally and professionally. This blog post will mostly serve as motivation for the next year and to hold me accountable. As the years keep flying by, I realize more than ever that I need to maximize my time to get to where I want to be. Let's take a look at the latest of the journey.
By the numbers
These are some statistics that matter to me. They aren't where I want them to be, but hey, you have to start somewhere. I'm already looking forward to see how these will compare to next years stats.
By the projects
These are projects that I felt were successful this past year. How do I measure success? By the project's usage and feedback I receive from the community. It's what fuels me.
Trends
There are notable trends in my work that also validate the topics that I enjoy working with the most.
- CLIs - I've been developing a lot of command-line interfaces. I've come to appreciate the qualities of a good CLI and welcome the challenge of implementing them. One that is fail-safe for the end-user, well documented, uses spinners and colors to convey messages, supports multiple output formats, I could keep going...
- Code generation - This has been a fascination of mine since my early Java days and a common theme in my latest projects. I find code to be a liablity. The more code can that be controlled through generation, the more maintainable and malleable it will be for the future.
- Docusaurus - V2 was released this year and has been instrumental for not only creating documentation sites for my projects, but also powering this blog! It will be my go-to solution for the foreseeable future. Whether your open-source project is small or large, a Docusaurus site will elevate it to the next level.
Looking ahead
My career goal has always been to create a micro SaaS product(s). It hasn't happened yet and it's not from a lack of trying, but I've got to admit what I've been doing all these years of tirelessly grinding hasn't worked. As hard as it is to change, this year I'm going to take a different approach and spend more away from the screen. Maybe this will help me gain a different perspective and the time that I do spend programming will be more efficient. We'll see where this leads. See you all in 2023!
LFG
