My Year-In-Review — 2018

The power of open source.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Okay… First things first. Why am I writing this blog post? Well, I thought of documenting/sharing important moments of my life in 2018. Hoping this would push me to improve myself in the coming year and on the other hand, it would motivate fellow developers who are just jumping into tech.

I wasn’t considered opensource seriously until 2018. Why? It’s not that I wasn’t aware. It’s just that I wasn’t making the most of my time. But in 2018, I tried to balance both my normal work and contributing to the community.

1. Articles

Even before I explored Medium, I was writing all the tech stuff in my own website. But I was killing most of my time at managing the website like upgrading plugins, managing SEO etc and maintaining a website was above my head too. So, this year, I ditched my website and chose Medium for blogging.

My first article focussed on Lint’s amazing feature called STOPSHIP.

I got an amazingly overwhelming response for my second article where I listed a few awesome online tools which I discovered over the period of time as a developer.

Awesome List Of Online Tools For Android Developers

My recent article which focussed on automating the generation of Release APK.

Takeaway

1. My articles got featured in many weekly newsletters like AndroidWeekly, MindOrks Weekly, AndroidLibHunt.
2. My articles got featured in medium publications like ProAndroidDev, MindOrks.
3. I joined MindOrks, ProAndroidDev, Noteworthy — The Journal Blog publication as a Writer.

2. Twitter

Though I joined twitter in 2014, it took some time to understand that Twitter would bring me a lot of tech information. I started using Twitter for all the tech updates, to learn how people posting their contribution.

Recognition and appreciation

Waking up to see the Appreciations and Thanking notes would surely make your day. One of my blog posts was recognized by Google Play Apps & Games, a Google Play team. They appreciated and recommended reading the blog post.

Awesome List Of Online Tools For Android Developers

And a few other articles were recognized and appreciated by Antonio Leiva, a JetBrains certified Kotlin trainer and a freelancer.

How did I automate the generation of Release APK

Takeaway

1. In an android community, information floods every day. Twitter and Medium have been my main source of information to catch all those up.
2. Twitter keeps me updated, keeps me learning every day.

3. Kotlin, MVVM, Dagger

2018 has been an amazing year for me in terms of learning. I started learning a new programming language(Kotlin), a new architecture(MVVM), a new dependency injection library(Dagger. well, I know I’m a bit late to the party).

I have created a couple of pet projects to learn these concepts. I have also open sourced MVVM based Todo application which is built using Android architectural components & Kotlin.

Naveentp/MVVM-To-Do-App

Takeaway

1. Learning is a continuous process. Being a developer one should learn, keep updated every day.
2. Learning these concepts boosted my productivity, added value to my portfolio.

4. Opensource/Github/Stackoverflow

All these days I have been consuming the content from these greatest platforms to get my things done. I felt it’s my time to contribute the same to the platforms.

This year I started contributing to the Github in my free time. I have created a couple of projects focussing MVVM, ReactiveX, Kotlin. I also continued contributing & helping the fellow developers with my answers at Stack Overflow.

Takeaway

Self Satisfaction. Yes, That’s right. If any of my contributions helped at least one developer, that will make my day. Because I have been/still being there in that place.

5. Tech Meetups/Android Community

Meetups

This being the most important part of my life, there is a reason why I put this as the last point. The first 4 points which I mentioned earlier which came out of attending meetups. Attending a meetup made me learn about the latest trends, meet amazing people who are always ready to help. I’m thankful for all the groups who organize the meetup, sharing knowledge with all the fellow developers in the community.

Few groups who organize meetups in Bangalore

1. BlrDroid — One of the oldest Android developer group in Bangalore that organizes monthly meetups.
2. BlrKotlin — A group dedicated to anything which is Kotlin.
3. SwiftBLR — A iOS/swift meetup group.

Takeaway

1. I got a chance to listen and meet the awesome Hadi Hariri, developer advocacy. JetBrains.
2. I have attended multiple meetups and workshops that made me learn more about the technology and meet amazing people in the industry.

TL;DR

1. I started writing articles in medium this year.
2. My articles got featured in weekly newsletters like AndroidWeekly, MindOrks, AndroidLibHunt.
3. Received an appreciation from the Google Play team, Antonio Leiva and fellow developers of the Android community for the article that I wrote.
4. Started contributing to Github.
5. Learned a new programming language (Kotlin).
6. Got a chance to meet Hadi Hariri, developer advocacy. JetBrains. **fan moment**

So, that pretty sums up everything about my 2018. What an amazing year! What about 2019? Ah! I’m pretty excited for the new year! let’s see what new year has it for me…

Thanks for making it to the end. If you are still reading this, take my suggestion, please write articles, contribute to the open source, attend meetups, give tech talks and be awesome. Start your new year with the new goals.

Best of luck!

I wish you a happy new year! May the force be with you!

Happy coding!

Let’s become friends on Twitter, Linkedin, Github.