2012 is a great year for me, lots of new things and new experience happened,
and I also explored and learned lots of things in software from work and projects.

In the last day of 2012, I think it is a good time to review what I have done in this year,
what I can improve and my expectation for the incoming year.

Work

Ruby, python and coffeescript

In 2012, I mainly work on three different languages:
I was working on Rails from last year’s project, and join spling.com afterward.
Start to accomondate with django and celery. And write some side project with coffeescript in my offtime.
Derive from those experience of side projects. Now I am mainly working on node.js.
The build-in event loop of node.js is really powerful,
not only make your code can work in real time application but also make it more efficient to handle requests.
And the community is very active too. Lots of packages and new thoughts are invented (or reinvented) in node.
Although javascript(and coffeescript) is not as clean and pleasure to work with as Ruby on Rails.
But so far I feel pretty comfortable on this platform, I will continue to write code on node.js in 2013.

Source code reading

Another big improvement this year is I started to read more source code in open source projects.
Start with Sinatra, I took the class of reading source code of Rails, and read through express, railsway.js and Tower.js,
some client side framework like ember.js and angular.js.
Other than web frameworks, I randomly read the source of some interesting projects too.
Although I don’t feel my coding speed is faster, but I learned something from design and code details in those projects.
Also it largely improved my code reading speed and ability to work on existing project.

Messaging queue

Working on celery and node.js makes me learned more how to work async,
in spling.com, we process the link we a sequence of small tasks, like web parse and api calls.
How to run those tasks in parallel and aggregate results make me easier to work on node.js.

Javascript frameworks

In the frontend part, I worked on Backbone.js in spling.
But I also survey and read sources of other front-end frameworks and examples of Todos mvc.
like ember.js, angular.js and components. Ember.js is a powerful framework,
but too many magics behind and learning curve is pretty steep. For the need of javascript MVC,
I still prefer Backbone and I would like to try more things on components.
I think it is a powerful concept, and I am going to build a new project base on it.

Projects

In last year, I was planning to more involved in open source development.
But in the end didn’t contribute any valuable code to big projects :(
However, I still fork and patch some projects for my own requirement and create some projects on github. included:

• Papercut : node.js carriar wave clone.
• n37.co : express url shortener.
• Resume : build my resume to html, pdf and host on github pages.
• Bands-in-town-watcher : Running cron job to check changes on bands schedule.
• mail-parser : ruby dsl parser for parsing email.
• Chatty(incomplete) : socket.io chat room lib.

Also, I initiate a few private projects too:

• tilio : node pinterest clone.
• masxaro : Rails application that parse receipts email and display what user have bought.
• getflow : My attempt for Pomodoro, but I am still fighting to produce more quality concentration time.
• playdiary.tw : A wordpress blog that aggregate my friend’s travel and food articles,
  the purpose of this blog is to learn facebook fan page and ad. Right now I stop posting new article on it,
  Because posting other people’s article is not that fun.
  However I am still planing to rebuild this blog with static content generator and my own articles.

Other than those, thanks @amonter5 teach me the basic of iOS development.

Overall, although I created numbers of projects, those project’s quality is not good enough.
Need to improve completeness, have more documents for projects in 2013.
Also trying to maintain an open source package may be a good way to learn how to create popular projects.

Life

Other than code, I enjoy a lot of the New York life. Thanks my bro, Alan, who take me to all those great trips and concerts.

Travels

• Taiwan
  
  Back to the home after 2 years. Meet friends and reunion with family.

• Gwan
  
  For my brother’s wedding, it’s an unforgetable one. Well arranged, the church there is really beautiful.

• Japan
  
  For snowboard and meet with my friend. Great trip, hot spring after snowboard is the best.
  Stay with one of my best friend in highschool in sendai and watch K-ON movie is very…Otakuness.

• Vegas and Grand Canyon
  
  With my parents, treval with parents is one of my most meaningful memory.
  Vegas and Grand Canyon is great, hope we can have another trip soon.

• Miami
  
  Jet Pack rules, the coolest water activity I ever have. another great trip include nude swiming in keywest beach.

• Peru
  
  Treveled around Cusco, walked through Inca trail in a 4 days 3 nights hike and visited Maccu Picchu.
  Than went to Puno and lake Titicaca, Back to Lima and watch Nasca line and sandboarding in dessert.
  Fly to Amazon Jungle and live in Jungle launge for Safari. Try the best 2 restaurants in Peru.
  To much memory there. It’s the best trip ever.

Experence

• Gun shooting
  
• Jet Pack
• Wakeboard
  
• Rafting
• Kayaking to Status of Liberty
  
• Bartender bootcamp

Concerts and games

• JayZ
• Orion festivel, Metalica
• Slipknot
  
• Linkin Park
  
• Off Spring
• RHCP
• Knicks vs Rockets
  
• L’arc En Ciel
• Live-In Theater Interactive Murder Mystery
• Sleep No More
  
• Spiderman - Turn off the dark
  

Plan for 2013

Code

More coding!
Seriously, I need to concentrate and push myself more on coding.
One of my problem is I can’t keep my productivity in high gears,
and spend too much time on reading fourm and online comics.
Also need to code more efficiently with tools and learn from great programmers.

Project

Currently trying to build a components based static html engine: Meteora,
with components, theme and widget can be managed by dependencies and can be reused easily.
Main target is to complete this and use it to rebuild my blog, playdiary.tw and my brother’s blog.

One blog every week

Also, improve my blogging and English writing. Have to keep the blog speed to 12 hour and keep writing.
However, a high quality blog like Source code odyssey series will take about 34 days to finish.
So how to keep quality and speed might be a problem but, I have to keep the tempo of writing blog.

some blog ideas for 2013:

• Event loop
• Hadoop
• Build your Iaas : AppHouse
• Meteor
• Jquery deffered
• Advence Git
• Chef
• Source code odyssey : Railsway.js
• Source code odyssey : Pow
• Source code odyssey : Hubot
• Source code odyssey : Redis

Reading

Read more non-fiction and technical books:

• Machine Learning for Hackers
• Enterprise application patterns
• Continuously delivery
• Javascript Ninja
• Big data
• Rails essential patterns
• Create your own programming language

Novel

Finish a novel is one of my dreams, and should be a goal in 2013.
Some drafts in my dropbox need to be completed.

Travel

Probally not as much as 2012, but I want to visit Europe and Japan again if I have chance in 2013.
and meet my friend in San Francisco and developers in Silicon Valley.
Also a weekend trip to Chicago will be great too.

And…

I don’t know this project will works or not, but I will try my best on it.
Wait and see in 2013…