2018, My Year in Retro
A bit late into the new year but let’s get to it…
Firstly I would like to wish everyone a Happy and Blessed New year! Don’t take it for granted that we made it into 2019. The purpose of this article is to look back at the year 2018 and share some of the successes and some failures in the year.
Retrospection — the action of looking back on or reviewing past events or situations, especially those in one’s own life.
Now, where should we start? I guess right here on Medium…
Writing
2018 was definitely my most active and successful year on Medium. I tried to dedicate as much time as I could to share my learnings with the community. I usually have a hard time thinking about what I want to write about. I used to daunt myself with questions such as: who wants to read this, will anyone like this post, am I wasting my time, I’m sure someone has already written about this. What helped me get over the hurdle of just writing was reading a post by John Sundell where he encouraged readers to just write about what they have learned and share their own perspectives. Reading that encouraged me to share things that I have been learning.
I would never say I know everything about the topics I write about as I am also just learning this lovely language called Swift and sharpening my skills in iOS Development. This is why in the past year I enjoyed the engagement on my articles people’s positive criticism was greatly appreciated. It made me a better developer and gave me the time to review my own code and improve on it.
Major Thanks
I can not thank the team at Flawless App enough for the contribution to my success on this platform. My writing has greatly improved and has been able to reach a much wider audience thanks to their help.
Highlights 🤩
- Two of my articles ranked in the Top 50 Swift Articles of the Year 2018.(#34 & #35)
- Made it to the list of Top 10 Swift Articles of the Month for two months in 2018.
- Reached over 5k 👏🏾 on one article.
- Gained over 700 🏃♂️followers.
- Over 100 🌟on Github 🐙.
Career
Now my job and career is not something I take for granted. I am very privileged to wake up in the morning, head to work and do something I am genuinely passionate about. 2018 was my second year working as a full-time iOS developer. I worked with an awesome team for a Fintech startup in Cape Town. I learned a lot from my team lead and have become a much better developer thanks to his leadership and guidance.
In 2019 I’ll be taking on a new challenge and joining a new team as an iOS Engineer at a Cryptocurrency startup 🌑. I look forward to this next step in my career.
Degree
I finally completed my BSc Computer Science 😫🎓🎉. Okay, so this thing was not easy to get. Working full time and studying part time comes with so many challenges. During the second half of the year, most of my time was dedicated to my studies. I am glad to say that I finally have that behind me.
⚠️Now let me give my own opinion on whether one needs a debate to pursue a career in computer science. No! You do not NEED a degree. What I would tell anyone is if you have the resources and time to get a degree then you should definitely get one. If you don’t then it is not the end of the world there are so many paths to enter the industry and a degree is no gatekeeper!⚠️
Goals for 2019 🚀
My goals for this year can be summarized in a few words: grow, learn, share and do better. This will be my mantra for the year. With this mantra in mind, I hope to achieve the following:
- Write more articles (tech/non-tech).
- Be a meaningful contributor to my new team.
- Learn more about Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains.
- Learn React, Nodejs, and Go.
- Release one of my pet projects into production.
If you want something to happen, write it down.
I would like to thank everyone that clapped, commented and shared my articles on here. I have met some awesome people on this platform who have taught me a lot. I wish you the best for the coming year. Whatever goals you have set out for yourself go out the and just SMACK IT! 👊🏾
