A wild ride in my 16th year
Tags: beginners, career
Published: 2021-02-15 15:04:02

*This post was originally posted on my personal [blog](https://bugged.dev/post/A-wild-ride-in-my-16th-year).*

I'm not 16 anymore from now on (Feb 15, HBD to myself🎉), But my 16th (2020-21) year on earth was the first year of my professional career where I started learning and making things seriously, so be with me and see the highlights. Hope you like this wild journey.
## 2020🧛🏻
The most miserable year in the 21st century, everyone knows about it, we lost many friends, many jobs and many things I'm so sorry about. Still, at the same time, it was a productive year for me, no hanging out, less school and it empowered my programmers-life lifestyle. I think every programmer feels the same, doesn't?
So let me start the main thing and tell you about my career.
## The beginning
Actually I didn't expect such a year specifically for me. I had many ups and downs, but they made my year so exciting. I didn't know that I would be an active Github user or be in a job position (Thank you, [Hossein](https://github.com/HosseinShabani), for helping me in that); it was all unexpected. I expected a typical year like any standard years I've passed, but it was really different. 
## Svelte vs React🤔
I was learning HTML/CSS and javascript and practising them more and more, but everyone kept telling me that I have to choose a framework/library. Most beginners had the Vue vs React or React vs Angular dilemma, but I had a different one you saw in the heading. I was exploring [dev.to](http://dev.to); everyone's talking about svelte future, Learning it, and why we should. However, we had many react developers, and react itself grows day by day, I didn't know which to choose. I randomly chose svelte and learned many great things about it. Actually, even I don't know what to suggest to beginners; I may tell svelte to newbies first because, don't want to exaggerate but if you deep dive into react hole, you won't get out of it quickly. 
## So Svelte

Nice looking technology, no challenging concepts and no state-management options anymore, It's literally all-in-one. I really loved its docs, and you can take a look [here](https://svelte.dev/tutorial/basics), learn things so fast with the live examples in front of you. Absolutely I had some difficulties in learning svelte, but when I take a look at them now, they weren't that hard.

I really loved the way svelte treats global stores, syntax and reactivity, so genius. I think svelte is so potent that it needs a more significant community to take over most modern technologies. 

[My friend](https://github.com/blackestwhite)'s team and I planned to make an idea into a real-world project, so the front-end was with me, I built it with svelte, the experience was incredible, but unfortunately, we cancelled the project. Here's the project [repository](https://github.com/ArimaTeam/LyricBox) (Don't bother me for my dumb commit messages).
## React😮
I joined many communities, and everyone was a reactjs developer, I couldn't even talk about React; So I had to join reactjs. When I joined react community, I found out why they don't talk about things except react. I just said that's it, that is what I want. 

I started practising and doing stuff, shared some of them in Github and some not. Started reading articles about reactjs from different authors. Then I made my first ever npm package called contextism, and I was inspired by one of [kent](https://github.com/kentcdodds)'s posts about reactjs context API, Seeing others use your stuff is one of the best feelings ever. That's how I fell in love with creating and helping others. 
## Open-source😌
But wait, Contextism wasn't my first open-source activity. It was [Espresso](https://github.com/disizali/espresso), So what is Espresso? It's something like expressjs but not for nodejs; it's for denojs, we made it when all developers talked about a new trend called deno. Thanks for [Ali Hasani](https://github.com/disizali) for bringing me into contributing javascript libraries.

![Hactoberfest T-shirt](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/u6fnig4ciuw8lziq5yrn.png)

## [Hacktoberfest](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/)
If you don't know about this monthlong celebration, let me tell you that it's one of the best things for open source (as long as spammers don't attend). I contributed to these repositories in this celebration:
### [Carbon](https://github.com/carbon-app/carbon)
It has an ugly source code but a challenging one, I refactored some code and sent a pull request to the repository, it was a special feeling for me.
### [Jotai](https://github.com/pmndrs/jotai)
How should I start with this? It started with just 3 pull requests for Immerjs combination, and now I'm a collaborator there. I really love this package. If you know Recoil, forget about it, we have a better one, it's jotai. I learned about promise batching, acceptable pull requests and even how to manage a repository. Thanks, [Daishi](https://github.com/dai-shi).
## Writing✏️
The best way of learning is teaching, that's weird, but that's how it is. I started writing stuff because [swyx](https://github.com/sw-yx)'s Learn-In-Public inspired me, then I decided to make my own blog with my own domain, That's why I started [Bugged.dev](https://bugged.dev). I'm in love with writing, suggest you start too, it's not that hard, but it takes time to dive into the writing routine. It's so fun to share your drafts with your friends and let them review your drafts; I always share them with my friends like [Ali](https://github.com/aliPMPAINT).
## [Poimandres](https://github.com/pmndrs)
Contributing to jotai, valtio and eslint-plugin-valtio made and some other libs made me into such a lovely, friendly and active group. We maintain many wondrous things; you can take a look at our Github. Thanks, [Paul](https://github.com/drcmda), for letting me in.

In the end, I'm fortunate for having my family♥️, A supportive and helpful one, and I really wanted to thank them for everything. I have many plans for my 17th. I'll write about them slowly. Lucky too for having such readers hope you liked this post, don't forget to show me your reactions also, really love you all. Alhamdulillah.
- Cover image: Fuji-Q Highland, Priscilla Du Preez, unsplash