Personal retrospective for 2023.

Learned a LOT. Got completely fullstack.

Liked

  • Web development including SSR, progressive enhancement, etc.
  • Implementing UX, styles to match mockups from a dedicated designer. And feel comfortable about it.
  • Playwright for UI testing.

Learned

  • Improved my frontend skills, up to the point where I’m fully confident now across the full stack:
    • SSR, progressive enhancement…: remix professionally, svelte personally.
    • CSS.
  • Python: to the point where I maintain live backend services we inherited from another team.
  • C#, dotnet: existing live backend services in the prevention team.
  • CICD: github actions (I was more used to jenkins in the past).

Loathed

  • Company-wide SDLC policy that proved inflexible for some of the apps we maintain, mandating more environments than needed. Luckily we didn’t have to do too many changes in those.
  • C#, and a bit of dotnet in general.
  • Lack of support for FP in python.

Longed for

  • More FP. For sure I’d like f# better than c#. I’m happy with a language that at least allows FP (like js/ts), or I’d be game for learning a purely functional one.
  • A greenfield project. It’s been a few months now since the last one.