My 2019 Year In Review
Tags: yearinreview, career, showdev, 2019
Published: 2019-12-31 11:12:56

Early this year, I read [Prosper's 2018 year review](https://medium.com/@unicodeveloper/2018-in-review-shattering-expectations-9418f2d720cc) and it inspired me to do and accomplish a lot and is also the reason I've decided to also start writing my year review as well.

2019 has been a year of ups and downs for me, mostly ups 😁. The first quarter of 2019 was not so pleasant for me, but I was able to bounce back, turn things around and have a great year.


At the beginning of the year, I did not plan to do some of the things I did, my only plan/goal was to become a better software developer, all the other things like writing, mentoring came along
from people around me pushing me to greatness.

## Humbling moment of 2019 🙇🏾‍♂️
I took a technical interview sometime this year for a position at a company, turned out it was to be taken on Codility. It was my first time hearing/interacting with the platform, I was used to Hackerrank mostly then.

Fast-forward, I took the test on Codility, I think there were 3 questions. I solved about 2 of them, with sample tests passing, only for me see the results and I got **0%**.

<div class="Image__Small">
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/50xss96423ew4lq9yehc.gif" alt="Gif" />
  <figcaption>
    What!!! How??
  </figcaption>
</div>

I later learned that the example test cases did not count toward the final score results. I knew I wasn't that good with Algorithms and Data Structures then but I never expected to get 0% in a coding challenge.

It was truly a humbling experience that just made me realize I had lots of things I still needed to learn. Since then I've taken courses on Data Structures & Algorithms, and also solved coding challenges from time to time.

## Work & Personal Projects 👨🏾‍💻

### Work

- [Andela](http://andela.com): At the beginning of the year, I was working for [Andela](http://andela.com) as a Software Engineer, and it was a great experience for me, I met lots of fantastic people with great minds who pushed me to give my very best. On September 17, however, Andela laid off about 400 engineers (read about it [here](https://andela.com/insights/the-future-of-andela)), sadly I was one of them.
  
  Andela invested a lot in me, and I'd be forever grateful for the experiences and the support that Andela showed, even after we were laid off.

<div class="Image__Small">
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/gna1kip4ct0bw6yy9s8h.jpg" alt="Andela Party" />
  <figcaption>Andela Party 😁</figcaption>
</div>


<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/608u4n1m80w0ldqhfmlp.jpg" alt="Andela Hangout" />
  <figcaption>L-R: Chinedu,Tunmise, Me</figcaption>
</div>


- [Lambda School](https://lambdaschool.com): I started work as a Technical Team Lead at [Lambda School](https://lambdaschool.com) in November, and it has been quite an experience.
  I work with people from diverse backgrounds, and it has been an opportunity for me to improve my leadership and communication skills.
  
  Some of my responsibilities as a Technical Lead include:
  - Leading a team of learners that emulates a real work environment using the agile methodology.
  - Mentoring learners on how to learn effectively and solve programming problems.
  - Providing daily feedback and issue resolution of all curriculum through slack help channel or code review.
  - Delivering one-on-one feedback and code review daily.
  - Reviewing student code and giving feedback on areas of improvement.
  - Leading daily standup meetings to build camaraderie, facilitate sharing of ideas and work progress, and provide guidance for that week's study material.



<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/kxl3yquixtrvi2q0i4ph.png" alt="Team Meetng" />
  <figcaption>Team Meetng (Awesome times 😅)</figcaption>
</div>

<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/kqr90fvz3kjjcvbz99nu.jpeg" alt="Lambda School Lagos Hangout" />
  <figcaption>Lambda School Lagos Hangout</figcaption>
</div>

### Personal Projects

This year was my most active year on Github, I made **3,164** contributions working on projects, as well as open-source contributions in 2019.

Some of the fun projects I developed are:

- [Portfolio](https://www.ezekielekunola.com): I built my Portfolio with Gatsby to learn the amazing prowess of Gatsby and GraphQL.
- [Blog](https://www.blog.ezekielekunola.com): This was built using one of the [Gatsby starters](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/starters/?v=2), I also used this as an opportunity to learn more about Gatsby & GraphQL.
- [Use My Tech Stuff](https://ls-umts.netlify.com): This project was built to demonstrate my understanding of React & Redux.
- [Marvel Comics](https://marvel-comic-characters.netlify.com): This was a fun project I decided to build with Marvel's API.
- [School In The Cloud](https://distracted-stonebraker-f30c76.netlify.com): This project was built for demonstrating my understanding of Flexbox.
- [Multi-User Dimension Game](https://mud-mount-doom.herokuapp.com): This was a team project built with React & Python to further establish an understanding of Data Structures and Algorithms.

<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/l2gszwx98z9zjato93jj.png" alt="Github Graph" />
  <figcaption>My 2019 Github graph</figcaption>
</div>

## Writing ✍🏾

I started writing around July 2019 and I have written a total of 10 articles this year, including this one. I write on my experiences with tools and technologies as well as teaching how to use different tools.
 My first ever article was on [Deploying React app from Github to Netlify](https://dev.to/easybuoy/deploying-react-app-from-github-to-netlify-3a9j).


Writing has not exactly been easy for me, I was not able to write as much this year as I would have loved to. I'm still trying to figure out the best way that works for me, what topics to write on, but I believe I'll get better with time and consistency.
I want to give special shoutouts to [Johnson](https://dev.to/ogwurujohnson), [Chinedu](https://dev.to/nedsoft) and Xavier(XROLE) for their support and motivation, and for helping me find bugs in my articles 🤪.

I've gotten some good feedback from people as to how my articles helped them one way or another, which just motivates me to want to do more.

Top 5 articles of the year 
{% link https://dev.to/easybuoy/testing-node-api-with-mocha-chai-248b %}
{% link https://dev.to/easybuoy/deploying-react-app-from-github-to-netlify-3a9j %}
{% link https://dev.to/easybuoy/setting-up-a-node-api-with-postgres-and-knex-588f %}
{% link https://dev.to/easybuoy/getting-started-with-react-apollo-client-49il %}
{% link https://dev.to/easybuoy/my-first-experience-with-gatsby-44g6 %}


## Community 

### Open Source

I always wondered what contributing to Open Source meant 😅 and how it was possible, well I was able to find out this year. I contributed to several open source projects this year as well as participating for the first time in the [Hacktoberfest challenge](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com).
I also wrote about my contributions to the Hacktoberfest challenge [here](https://www.blog.ezekielekunola.com/my-hacktoberfest-contributions).

Some of the Open Source projects I contributed to in 2019 below: 
- [Gatsby](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby)
- [Developer Portfolios](https://github.com/Easybuoy/developer-portfolios)
- [Oh-my-zsh](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh)

<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/h4rm281ahp45jobo943p.png" alt="Hacktoberfest Swag" />
  <figcaption>
    Hacktoberfest Swag
  </figcaption>
</div>

### Events

This year, I was only able to attend the [concatenate](https://www.concatenate.dev) and [unstack](https://unstack.dev) events held in Lagos, Nigeria.

At the events, I learned a lot with topics ranging from Design, Communication, Accessibility, Building JAMStack apps, GraphQL & Gatsby, Functional Programming and so on. I was also able to network and connect with other people in the tech industry, and also find out the interesting things they've been building and developing.

I just want to thank the organizers of the events for putting them together. It was an awesome experience for me, and I can't wait to see what they have for us come 2020 🤗.
<div>
  <img src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/is2vh9nbdzi4aqajhq5z.png" alt="Concatenate Event" />
  <figcaption>
    L-R: Me, Chinedu, Benjamin, Noble, Yusuf (Concatenate conference)
  </figcaption>
</div>


### Mentorship

I was able to be part of the mentors of the [DevCTraining](https://devctraining.andela.com) program where I mentored participating learners, provided technical support, reviewed their code, and also delivered feedback to them.

---

#### Shoutouts 📣

Special thanks to **[Johnson](https://twitter.com/devopsjay), [Chinedu](https://twitter.com/iam_nedsoft), [Chidimma](https://twitter.com/Dimmajuliet16), Xavier(XROLE), [Ebenezer](https://twitter.com/ebenezerDN)** and everyone for making my 2019 🔥, encouraging, guiding, pushing, and providing me with the much crucial support. I'm really glad to have met you all 🤗.

---

## Plans for 2020

- Writing ✍🏾: In 2020, I'm looking to write way more than I did this year.
- Community 👨🏾‍💻: I want to be more involved in the developer community in the coming year. This means more volunteer work and also contributing more to open source projects and building developer tools.
- Reading 📖: I have never been a fan of reading books 😩, even though I've tried to. This year, I managed to finish reading a book titled **Eat a frog**, by Brian Tracy. My target next year is to read at least 10 books.
- Travel 🛫: I did a little or no traveling in 2019. Next year I'm looking to travel to at least 2 countries.



2020 is a year of doing more of the things I kickstarted this year. Looking forward to an awesome and exciting year ahead 🚀🚀🚀.

Originally published on my [blog](https://www.blog.ezekielekunola.com/my-2019-year-in-review)