A Beautiful Journey So Far — 2019 Year In Review
It’s the last day of 2019 and you should be excited, forget the “it’s just another year talk” and really get excited!
The year 2019 really came with loads of opportunities, advancement and also personal achievements, for me, it was really a beautiful year, but the year has come and it’s almost gone and just looking back on the year I'm just filled with gratitude! honestly, I’ve been through a whole lot, but remember if it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger.
This year, I was privileged to have been involved with loads of activities that involved writing, speaking, contributing to the open-source projects, building and maintaining software products and above all growing the tech community.
I’m really excited to share with you what I was up to in 2019, and this being my first ever Year In Review series, it’s just great to finally commit to writing this and I hope you enjoy it. well then, let’s get started!
Just so you know
The year basically started with celebrations, with January 5th being my birthday, I brought the 2018 celebration to 2019. Also, the year started with a promise to myself to do more and make noise about it, so that’s what I did.
Work 👨💻
Work early this year was just a funny tale, I got a job with a firm as a frontend developer, which after a few months I was continuously promoted from frontend developer, then lead developer, then chief technology officer, then Line manager, then Managing director and I got sacked, funny right?
Well maybe not funny but after that, I promised myself I would go back to fulltime remote and this was the best decision I made in 2019, for some reason I got a lot of job offers after being sacked, so much that I began to turn down offers 😂
Months past, long story short I was privileged to get a remote job, so most of my 2019 were spent working from home — Don’t believe the lies, remote jobs can be boring.
PROJECTS BUILT.
All in all, work in 2019 was great.
Most of 2019 I worked on projects alone, yes I handled the frontend, backend, mobile application (ios, android, windows), desktop(mac, windows, Linux). I must add working on all these three levels really increased my skill set by a longshot! I would be lying if I said I didn't encounter loads of issues but it was these issues, bugs, red screens that made me what and who I am today.
TECH STACK
For some reason, I thought I should add what programming language, UI library even IDE I use in my everyday development.
Throughout my 2019, I made use of JavaScript for every single task! last year I made use of Laravel intensively for backend work but when 2019 started I said no more PHP, I’m doing Javascript full time now.
Backend => NodeJS, FastifyJs, Firebase
Frontend => ReactJS, NextJS
Mobile => React Native
Desktop => ElectronJs
IDE => vscode
UI/UX => AdobeXD, Sketch and BuilderX, Figma
I do have article ready to be published in 2020, dedicated to tools I use and how they change the development process and most importantly, make it faster.
Personal Projects 👨💻
This year, I did quite an impressive amount of personal projects, and also took open-source seriously this year. Though my contribution count might not look like much I did a total contribution of 2,270.
This year I contributed and created a total of nine (9) open-source projects, of which I got really good feedbacks 😊
Some of which are;
Having people use my projects was a really exciting moment for me, each time I got a notification that someone had sent a pull request on Github I would just smile.
Writing ✍🏾
First, I would like to put it out there that I started writing this year, in fact, my first work was published on medium titled React Hooks for Newbies. When the year started I was honestly terrified on a range of things like, was I good enough, was my work even worth reading, what would I even write about?
But on May 11, I published my first work and others just followed! Don’t let unnecessary thoughts slow you down or hinder you from putting something out there, just write on something you already know.
So, in 2019 I published twelve (12) articles, you could say one for each month in 2019. The articles include;
- React Hooks for Newbies
- Handling Firebase Object
- How To Host Your Laravel Application For Free on Heroku
- How To Send Email Using Gmail SMTP Server In Laravel
- How To Setup Database On Heroku For Your Laravel Application
- Handling Push Notification In React Native — Using Expo
- How To Plan A Romantic Date On A N5,000 Budget.
- Where have Nigerian Tech Jobs Gone?
- Integrating Payment In your React Native Application — In Nigeria
- How To Host Your Next.js Application For Free On Heroku
- I know Tech Is The Future, But How Do I Get Started?
Looking back now, I honestly can’t believe I wrote any of these articles.
It’s one thing to write and it another for it to reach so many people, I am happy that these articles did reach its audience and to a large extent saved lives
Also, check out my Medium stats
Do check out my work, share with friends and don’t forget to clap 👏
Speaking & Community 🎤
This year I was fully involved in the developer's community at Abuja, Nigeria, some communities I had no business being involved but I joined anyway, Some of which are; Kotlin Abuja, Kotlin everywhere, GDG Abuja, Woman tech makers, Local hack day.
In the course of the year, Akunne Obinna, a friend of mine gave me a reason to start up a community of my own, rather than just being an attendee, and I did just that!
Early this year I started a community called React Native Nigeria 🇳🇬 , this was a community whose main aim was to ease the development process for newbies and also providing a means of networking between expert developers and newbies. Currently, we have a total of 170 members in the community (Abuja alone)
On the 21st of December, we had our first ever workshop in Abuja, where we spoke on react native related topics like Navigation in React Native by Abdulrazaq Imam, Responsive design in React Native by Moso Akinyemi and UI automation in React Native by Oluwatobi Shokunbi.
The community also has an online presence on Medium and Twitter, so if you’re thinking of starting a career in mobile development I do suggest you join this community. If you’d like to see more pictures of our previous React Native Workshop, do check it out here.
This year, I was part of the educators of Relearn summer of code.
Others
Finished NYSC
I completed my NYSC program this year, and although it was an annoying experience I’m glad it’s all over.
Reading 📖
Well, this year I did read tonnes of technical articles, but I guess that doesn’t count. But I had a few time on my hands to read two books this year;
- The Millionaire next door by thomas j. stanley & william D. Danko.
- Javascript grammar by jstut
What to expect in 2020?
This year has been simply beautiful, It’s actually the year I got a lot of things right by hard work and keeping to my promise of doing more.
In 2020 I do plan on doing a whole lot more than I did this year, I will be publishing more articles on interesting topics like How To Get a job aboard, How to make money from your articles on Medium and loads more. I do also plan on making video contents so watch out for that.
In Tech, I have major plans of going into IoT, I have already started making plans for it in 2019 and this new year I’ll just be taking serious actions to make this a reality, one of the projects I’m low-key working on is a magic mirror. I also have articles dedicated to how I’ll be making it, more on this in 2020.
The React Native Nigeria Organizing team and I have loads planned out for 2020, we’re working on setting up more communities across Nigeria, and just a little spoiler, we’ll be having a React Native conference in Lagos by March 2020, so I hope you come around for that.
I plan on also speaking more, I have already begun talking to the community leads across Nigeria to save me a spot on upcoming events, so if you see me in your state across Nigeria, don’t be shy to walk up and have a talk.
Make Money, Make changes
Throughout my 2019, I had four words that really defined me and any decision I made most of the year, which was;
— Make Money, Make Changes
For the most of the year, I could say money was really not a problem, but I told myself that I would use this money to do a lot to improve myself and the tech community, looking back now I am happy with everything I was privilege to accomplish, and tho next year comes with it’s own motto, I’ll always remember 2019 as the year I got it right 😁
It’s really been a beautiful journey and I hope yours was too, I’d love to read about yours in the comments.
Also, feel free to reach out to me on twitter.
