2022 in Retrospect

2021 was a busy year. I did many different things, studied many others, worked as a professional developer, and became a student. It’s hard to categorize this year as good or bad. It was a year with many regrets and many gains. I was put in many uncomfortable situations and learned a lot by breaking those.

1. Work

From January to September this year, I worked at a company called Moye. It’s an early-stage startup that provides a fashion pre-order platform. When I joined the company, I became the web frontend team lead.

Initially, I struggled to determine what was wrong with the product and what needed to be improved first. I hesitated to voice my opinion to the technical lead or other team members because I thought, “Is this a real problem? Should I allow to say this?” However, as time passed, I clearly communicated my thoughts on problems and improvements. I put much effort into research and validation to make a compelling case.

At the time, the company wanted to rapidly expand the product’s capabilities. With limited staff, tasks were always solved in a tight timeframe, so I think I focused on reducing the complexity of the legacy code, making it easier and faster to attach features, and changing the working process to be more efficient.

I really like making docs, so I created a lot of internal documentation: research documentation for new technology introductions, archiving the strange errors I encountered while working on the React Native project, and even on my last day, I was writing documentation. I left the company with a multi-page will and testament(…) document summarizing what was left to do and what was needed to focus on.

The insights and opinions exchanged through documents rather than verbally were important and lasted long because we were all so busy and frantic. Therefore, it was helpful for the team to create and share documents autonomously.

I learned a lot. I wanted to give good code reviews to my teammates, so I read and studied, and the quality of my code improved a lot. I learned a lot of points that are necessary to run a live service right away. I’ve better understood why fallback UIs, exception handling, and error monitoring are essential.

One of the most important assets I’ve gained from this bumpy ride is the confidence that “I can learn and grow anywhere.”

Of course, growth could be faster and more efficient for a junior developer to learn in manageable situations, not an early startup. You need a good team and seniors to steep the growth graph.

However, I would say that my time at Moye was valuable in that it confirmed my ability to develop myself even in extreme situations where I was chased by milestones without enough team members, including seniors, and was able to make some contributions to the team and the company.

2. Problem Solving(Algorithm)

It was a year of studying algorithms. It’s a little, but I solved about 300 problems in Baekjun, Litcode, and Programmer throughout the year. I did a little while working, and even after returning to school, I solved complex algorithmic problems and significantly increased my PS skills.

I always had a thirst for computer science and algorithms, and the period before graduation was the last time I could study PS, so I tried to solve algorithmic problems steadily this year.

Initially, I studied algorithms to apply for public exams at large companies, such as the Kakao Coding test. Still, the criteria for job hunting have changed recently, so I’ve been solving coding problems mainly by practicing live coding.

PS solving is similar to playing a strategy game like StarCraft, where you have to make a clear solution with good judgment within a limited time, and one wrong decision during the problem-solving process can make the problem unsolvable. The physicality of maintaining a high level of concentration for a few minutes or hours is also quite important. Practicing solving specific issues within a limited time has also helped me progress in my development projects.

One of the subtle benefits of studying PS is that you get a better understanding of the language you’re using. Solving problems in JS has helped me practice many methods and syntax that I don’t often use in production development.

3. Returning to school and graduating

In September, I returned to school full-time because I had too many credits left to juggle work and school. I’ve been slacking off and procrastinating on things I should have been doing, but this semester has brought me one step closer to graduation.

Now that I realize that my major, English Literature, has little to do with my work in development, I can go through school with a lighter heart. I chose my major because I love the humanities and writing, but I didn’t want to stress about my grades because I didn’t think that getting good grades meant that I understood the humanities, the world, or other people.

I liked English Literature more this semester because I didn’t care about the grades. However, towards the end of the semester, I was stressed because I had to study and had less time to develop software, so I almost gave up the final (…) But it was still an excellent time to reflect on why I love English Literature.

I’ve been in college for almost seven years now, and I can’t wait to graduate this year.

4. Maintain personal projects

Since September 2021, I’ve been working on version 2.0 of HUFS Semester-end Clock. I’m building it from scratch, starting with a boilerplate configuration. The Vuejs code I wrote two years ago is now code I’m embarrassed to show anywhere. Before I graduate, I want to take what I’ve learned so far and make a good project in the direction I think is ideal, even if it takes some time. Is this the last time I’ll be able to work on a project at my leisure and at my own pace since I’ll have to consider milestones and productivity once I join a company? I’m also thinking about it.

I recently moved juricidial case summary Twitter bot EC2 server to Firebase serverless. The main reason was that the project needed a CI/CD pipeline in place, so it was hard to modify the code, deploy it, and manage it, and the bill was $30 a month for almost a year. On the client side, we introduced SSR to dynamically attach thumbnails to reduce screen loading time and improved the UI to be more mobile-friendly since most of the service’s traffic is mobile.

I’ve been maintaining these two projects for almost two years now. I have about 900 users, including 300 followers of the Twitter bot and 600 users of the Clock. I don’t start a project because I want to practice a particular technology. Still, I learned a lot by maintaining my projects as I gradually figured out the right technology for the service. It’s possible because products have a small but substantial number of users, and I’m thinking a lot about improving the project by thinking user-centered while collecting user feedback.

I also received emails like this one this year, which warmed my heart. I get a lot of satisfaction and happiness from giving users a good experience and value with good services. Thank you so much to all HUFS Semester-end Clock and Precedent Bot users, and please feel free to give valuable feedback!

5. weekly technology trends

In January 2021, we started a technical session study. The study’s name is Weekly Tech Trends, reflecting its retro sensibility.

Every Sunday morning, 8 people gather to listen to 2 technical presentations. We started with 4 people and have grown to this point. Each week, we have junior developers from various backgrounds, such as Blockchain, Machine Learning, DevOps, etc., and web technologies like frontend and backend.

My favorite sessions were about on-device machine learning, DeFi, and ML Ops, which were all very new to me. Learning new technical things inspired me and helped me keep up with the latest trends in technology.

I was the original proponent of the study and organized the very first meetup. I started studying to meet people and see my friends’ faces once a week, even if nothing occasionally happened (…) But now we’ve already had over 70 tech sessions, and we’re collaborating with a recruitment platform to organize career content, so it’s become more significant than I thought. It’s almost as big as the name of the study, and I’m thrilled.

I’ve had working developers reach out to me after seeing the session materials, and I plan to host a small conference this year. I love sharing my skills, so I plan to organize good sessions and become a speaker at a more significant developer conference soon. It’s one of the best things I’ve done this year.

6. Job.

From the end of last year until now, I’ve been job hunting in earnest. I’ve been refactoring my portfolio projects, solving coding problems, organizing my experience, and polishing my resume.

I keep asking myself, “What do I want in a developer job?” I’m constantly exploring whether I want a big salary, stock options, or what kind of work environment or company culture would be a good fit for me. I’m starting to have a clearer sense of direction and rationale for where I want to go.

When I started developing, I had a vague idea about applying to Naver or Kakao, a big tech company in South Korea. However, after experiencing startups and meeting and talking to many current developers, I realized that working in a good team that is growing steadily and well rather than just the size of the company can be more rewarding in terms of personal and financial growth.

It’s tough, but I will keep thinking about it and try to have good luck in my job search this year.

7. Income and spending

After leaving my job in September this year, I became a student again and lost my source of income(…). I was pretending to be a poor man by telling people I had to spend only $20 a day. I had tasted money a lot, and suddenly, I had to live frugally, which made me sullen. Still, I wanted to focus on my studies in the second half of 2021, so I didn’t work and continued to study and develop software.

Since spring 2020, I’ve been trying to eat one meal a day of cooked natural food. In the corporate world, I tended to relieve stress by eating. Now that I’m back to eating whole foods, I feel lighter, and it saves me money because I don’t have to buy them. Right now, I have boiled sweet potatoes, eggs, and cherry tomatoes in my fridge.

I didn’t have enough money (…), so I spent less, unlike last year when I bought many things. I hardly bought any clothes. The situation was more severe than last year, so I couldn’t move around much and didn’t have many things I wanted to buy.

8. Productivity

Between jobs, I used to wake up at 7:30 a.m. and arrive at work around 9 a.m. I’m usually an early riser, so I like to start my day early.

However, after returning to university, I started working more and more on personal projects with open-ended assignments and flexible schedules, so I ended up sleeping later and later, which completely changed my rhythm, and my overall productivity suffered.

But if I stay up late, I’ll have to wake up early some days to get my rhythm back into the morning, and I won’t be able to do that well because I’ll be sacrificing time to work on tasks. I’m living in a vicious cycle…

I’ve tried many ways to ensure productivity and manage my tasks. I’ve installed, subscribed to, uninstalled, and unsubscribed from many productivity apps. Lately, I’ve gone back to writing by hand to manage my tasks in an app.

9. Imun district

In 2022, I have lived in Imun-dong, near university, for five years. It was my first neighborhood when I moved to Seoul from the southern province of South Korea, so I’m very attached to it. Recently, the shops I used to go to and the scenery I used to see are getting old, but it has been a good home for me in 2021. It’s also a neighborhood where I can be with my girlfriend, who is very busy attending graduate school, so I decided to continue living here in 2021, and we have yet to move out. I won’t move until my girlfriend graduates.

Soon-sim, whom I met in this neighborhood, is growing up well. She’s already over a year old, and I’m so grateful that she’s doing so well.

10. What I want to do in 2022

I had a lot of goals last year, and I didn’t accomplish them all (…), so this year, I’ve narrowed it down to a few that are feasible.

Find a job and work hard: I want to be a good member of a good team, and I’ll be working in 3-4 months at the latest. Graduate: I have some classes left and a short thesis, and I want to finish it successfully while working at the company.

• Learn something new: I’d like to learn Rust or Go as a new programming language. I’ve been working on serverless this time and am interested in serverless architecture, so I’d like to learn more about it. I want to be a developer who can make the right prescription for the service regarding infrastructure. Wake up well in the morning: I want to change my life pattern as soon as possible.
• Read books that are not related to development: I read many humanities books while going to school last semester and was quite happy. I want to continue reading books that are outside of development.

Closing remarks

A lot happened in 2021, and I lived a pretty good life. 2022 is a year where much of what I’ve been doing will come to fruition. I want to think well, move quickly, and make it a year of good results.

Thanks to my colleagues at Moye, my study group at Weekly Tech Trends, and many other acquaintances and friends who did many things with me in 2021, I had a fulfilling and fun year. I am very grateful to them. Last, I want to thank my girlfriend for always being there and supporting me. 2022 will be a happier and more fulfilling year.