2018 - Year In Review
Tags: yearinreview, webdev, career
Published: 2019-01-04 16:34:40

---
title: 2018 - Year In Review
published: true
description: 
tags: #yearinreview #webdev #career
---

2018 has been an amazing year for me. I **learnt** new things, **built** a few things, **wrote** a handful of blog posts and **met** some amazing devs in the community. But above all, I became a better dev by _learning and reflecting on my mistakes_ throughout. Here's a quick list down of how 2018 turned out to be an amazing year for me.

# Things I built in 2018

- [Browser or Node](https://github.com/flexdinesh/browser-or-node) - _January_
- [Typy](https://github.com/flexdinesh/typy) - _February_
- [Dev Landing Page](https://github.com/flexdinesh/dev-landing-page) - _March_
- [Axios Retry Interceptor](https://github.com/flexdinesh/axios-retry-interceptor) - _March_
- [React-Redux Boilerplate](https://github.com/flexdinesh/react-redux-boilerplate) - _March_
- [React Render-In-Browser](https://github.com/flexdinesh/react-render-in-browser) - _May_
- [React Socks](https://github.com/flexdinesh/react-socks) - _November_
- [Typy v3](https://github.com/flexdinesh/typy/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#300-9-dec-2018) - _December_
- [React Socks Stable](https://github.com/flexdinesh/react-socks/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#100-9-dec-2018) - _December_

# Things I wrote in 2018

- [How I got started with Open-Source](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/how-i-got-started-with-open-source--882) - _February_
- [Accessing Nested Objects in JavaScript](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/accessing-nested-objects-in-javascript--9m4) - _February_
- [Short Circuit Assignment in JavaScript](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/short-circuit-assignment-in-javascript--4k80) - _February_
- [Publish your own NPM package](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/publish-your-own-npm-package---5b71) - _March_
- [Create your developer landing page with GitHub Pages](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/create-your-developer-landing-page-with-github-pages---42jk) - _March_
- [React-Redux Boilerplate with Best Practices](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/react-redux-boilerplate-with-best-practices--2pp5) - _March_
- [Upgrade to Webpack 4](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/upgrade-to-webpack-4---5bc5) - _March_
- [I Created My Portfolio with React and Some Magic](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/i-re-wrote-my-portfolio-and-added-some-magic-22n7) - _April_
- [Render Browser Specific Content with React](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/render-browser-specific-content-with-react--amm) - _May_
- [Introducing Responsive React Components](https://dev.to/flexdinesh/introducing-responsive-react-components--1a6a) - _November_

# Goal Stats

- ✅ Start with OSS _(have over 10 actively maintained projects now)_
- ✅ Become an active contributor to a repo that’s not mine _(became one of the top contributors)_
- ✅ Create and publish a library that others find helpful _(have 7 libs now with 130k+ downloads)_
- ✅ Build a portfolio
- ✅ Hit 1k reps in Stack Overflow _(2.4k currently)_
- ✅ Hit 1k followers in dev.to _(2.2k currently)_
- ✅ Learn Docker, ELK stack, reverse proxy
- ⚠️ Hit 700 followers in twitter _(695 now)_
- ❌ Build a website that others find helpful
- ❌ Learn GraphQL, serverless, web components

# Summary

- Started with **OSS**
- Quit my awesome job to take on a **challenging** role
- Moved to **new country**
- Started contributing more in **Stack Overflow**
- Started building and **publishing libraries**
- Started **writing** about the things I learn and the things I build
- Became a publisher in **Hackernoon** and **Codeburst**
- All my write ups together have been viewed over **250k times** (100k+ DEV and 150k+ Medium)
- A few blog posts that I wrote got featured in other platforms and curations
- Found awesome people in the community (twitter and dev.to) and drew **inspiration** from them

# Dev principles I picked up in 2018

I want to wrap up this post by highlighting a few dev principles I learnt and strictly adopted in my workflow in 2018.

- Code **without tests** is as good as **no code at all**
- **No** Abstraction **>** **Wrong** Abstraction
- Most optimization strategies you come up with will either result in **premature-optimization** or **over-optimization**. **Optimize only when absolutely necessary**.
- Have a broader vision of the problem/solution but break it down and build in **small portions** incrementally
- If you add a todo to improve later, you’ll never get back to it. So, **do it now**.

🥂 To another wonderful year full of opportunities and amazing people 🥂