Beyond Code In 2020
Tags: newyear, 2020, personal, life
Published: 2019-12-28 09:10:37

---
title: Beyond Code In 2020
published: true
description: A glimpse into what holds in 2020. Going beyond code and frameworks
tags: new year, 2020, personal, life
---
It is that time of the year, and in a few days, we will be welcome the year 2020. Like all other years previously, people (including my humble self), have always looked forward to the new year. The new year will be excellent, we will hit the gym, learn ten programming languages and be an all-out better person and if all goes well, maybe gain some superpowers in the process. 

When I look at 2019, it has been for me a year of striving for stability. 2019, is the year I got married, moved house, started a new job and surprising as life would have it, I had to deal with a health situation. It has been a year of exploring different technologies like functional programming (Scala, Kotlin and F#), picked up Dart/Flutter as my one path to the mobile echo system. The year has also been a year I finally opened my heart to the Python programming language, and I am enjoying it. 

Looking around 2019, there were a lot of innovations, a lot of social media fights and for the most part, I have been watching, observing, lurking in the corner and picking lessons from the actions of others. It has also been a year I have slightly gotten bored with coding.

On the last part, I am not bored with coding. I recently started asking questions like - Do we really need to have a standup every morning? What are the measurable impacts of having a standup every morning? What if we did it every other day instead? How can I get people to think of what we do as actions to attain a vision rather than a Job we do to gain points during appraisals? 

Its been a year of people thoughts and challenges for me and as 2020 approaches, I have a general sense of what to work on and realised 2020 is a year of *BEYOND CODE*. I think I will be less technically smart and may not pick up a new framework, language but will focus more on problem-solving and people. 

The year 2020 will be a time I equip myself more with knowledge from non-technical books and maybe read more fiction novels (I do struggle to read novels). Over the course of the year, I did buy a few books with the hope to read them but never got around to it. So below is a list of books I am hoping will get me to Utopia in 2020: 

1. The Rules of People
2. The Rules of Management
3. The 360 Leader
4. Sacred Marriage (I still have to deal with people in my personal life outside work -- 😁)
5. Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
6. Engineering Maths (My maths has gotten worse over the years due to lack of application. Need to sharpen it again). 

Apart from gathering head knowledge, I think a fundamental principle is finding a good balance in life. My mum said this while growing up that: 
> Each week make sure you satisfy the different aspect of your life namely: 

> - Physical
> - Career
> - Spiritual 
> - Relational

And I feel I need to make a conscious effort to keep the above in mind. Hopefully, I get some improvement personally and also make the lives of others around me better. 

Let me know what you think and what your thoughts are for the new year 2020.