2023 Summary - Follow Your Heart
Categories: Life
Today is the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. Haha, my annual summary is delayed again. The summary for 2022, “Live Freely,” was also around this time. This year, I did quite a few things I wanted to do according to my own preferences. Let’s call it “Follow Your Heart.” I plan to talk about my life, endeavors, and work this year through a self-questioning and answering format.
Life
I’ve always felt that if every day is the same, then that day is wasted. So, I try to experience different things as much as possible, meet different people, as such a life is more interesting.
I. What interesting things happened in 2023?
In March, the weather was nice, so I went for a spring outing around Hangzhou, admiring the new greenery and a lot of cherry blossoms. I took some photos for the cover of a trendy weekly magazine, visited many nice new coffee shops to enjoy coffee, and spent the weekends coding on my laptop.
In April, I took a vacation to Qiandao Lake. I remember a fish head costing 200 yuan and it wasn’t even tasty; the commercial vibe was a bit too strong, so I won’t go again next time. At the end of the month, I also went to West Lake at night to experience the West Lake of the young people at midnight, listening to Wan Qing’s “Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang,” which was very passionate.
In May, I underwent all-laser LASIK surgery, getting rid of my glasses of more than 10 years. It felt great not wearing glasses. What I remember most about this month was daily eye drops and the miraculous process of vision recovery.
In June, the weather was very hot. I spent a lot of weekends coding in cafes, and the rest of the time was spent shopping for furniture and appliances like desks, dining tables, TV cabinets, refrigerators, and washing machines. I find choosing these kinds of things particularly interesting because it brings me joy to buy things I like.
In July, at the beginning of the month, I went to the Shenzhen GIAC Conference to share “Pake - Easily Build Lightweight Applications with Rust.” It was also my first visit to Shenzhen, where I met up with good buddies I hadn’t seen for several years. Later, I went to Hong Kong, took many photos, ate a lot, and wrote about “Hong Kong and its Unexpected Aspects”; in the latter half of the month, I also shared content related to Rust on a live broadcast on Juejin; this month, my MacBook Pro M2 in Space Gray finally arrived, and I absolutely loved it.
In August, at the beginning of the month, I met offline with friends like Thomas Yao, Tura Ding, Mingcheng, and An Bufe at Liangzhu and went to Mogan Mountain for coffee, which was very enjoyable; mid-month, I visited Wang Xiaobo’s bookstore “My Spiritual Home,” which was very quiet and atmospheric, as I love Wang Xiaobo’s articles; the happiest event at the end of the month was buying a Dahon P8 folding bike, and for the following months, I rode it to and from work, enjoying the breeze, and I’ve actually ridden 600 kilometers so far, which is very cool.
In September, a major event of the year was moving from the rental house to the new home, buying many beautiful pieces of furniture and appliances, setting up a study and a cat house, and even putting together a simple home theater, slowly getting the feeling of settling down, which was very satisfying.
In October, during the National Day holiday, I drove a toy car back to my hometown in Hunan, ate a lot of delicious food, and shortly after returning, I went to the Chongqing Frontend Conference to share “The Dilemma and Breakthrough of the New Generation of Frontend Development.” I also met friends from Ant Group that I hadn’t seen for a long time, ate local hotpot, and had a great weekend. This month I got the 15 Pro, sold my 13 Pro, and started keeping fish, buying an aquarium/fish/aquatic plants, feeding, changing water, and watching the fish, which was quite interesting.
In November, for the first time post-pandemic, I went to Tokyo and Osaka in Japan for 5 days, took the Shinkansen to see the long-awaited Mount Fuji, went up the Tokyo Skytree to view the night scene of Tokyo, visited Akihabara, Ginza, and had a delightful meal with MiaoYan’s Japanese developers. I also bought a GUCCI bag for my wife, which was very beautiful, and she was very happy.
In December, I went to the Microsoft GitHub Universe in Shanghai to share “My Open Source Growth Journey”, met Github’s VP Scott Densmore, which made me realize that being fluent in English would make participating in the open source community more interesting. Later, I visited the Pudong Art Museum’s exhibition, which was quite nice; this month, I bought AirPods Pro2, grilled steaks on a grill (which tasted okay), bought a semi-automatic coffee machine, and enjoyed a cup of coffee every morning.
In December and January, in the early days, I invited nearly 18 buddies to my place for a day of fun, playing Switch, petting cats, playing Texas Hold’em, and barbecuing, which was quite nice; in mid-January, I went to Ankang, saw a very small airport, tasted delicious steamed noodles, and brought back some spicy sausages from a relative’s home; before the New Year, I organized a New Year’s Eve dinner for the team, rented the second floor of a roasted whole lamb restaurant, gave out some gifts, and had a good time laughing and talking; this month, I bought a nice-looking lamp, a good-feeling mahjong set, completed my coffee-making tools, and went to the flower and fish market to get 10 peacock fishes, as well as the fact that Tuandai.com, which burst in a P2P scandal five years ago, started refunding money, which was quite satisfying.
In February 2024, before the New Year, I brought my family from Hunan to Hangzhou to spend the New Year for 10 days, cooking at home, playing mahjong, and strolling around the city, spending the Spring Festival with the family lively and happily.
II. What was the most memorable thing?
There were two things, the first one being the LASIK surgery. It only took about a month from deciding to get it done to completion, and fortunately, the recovery went very well. Now, it’s so convenient not wearing glasses. The process can be seen at All-Laser LASIK Surgery Process and Recovery Record.
The second one was moving into the new home. At the end of September 2023, I finally ended my days of renting. With four bedrooms and a living room, I set up a private study for myself, convenient for quietly reading and coding. During the move-in process, I bought quite a few things that I wanted, and the process of selecting these items was quite interesting.
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Endeavors
To me, endeavors are more like an elixir of life; they are things I like doing, and doing them well can greatly improve my life, learning, and work. They even keep me young. This positive feedback loop motivates me to continue doing things. In this section, I want to talk about some of the endeavors I’ve engaged in technology and open source, as well as content production.
III. What interesting things have you done in open source?
On the open source front, I continued iterating on MiaoYan and Pake, while also creating a Maple Chrome extension for personal use. Along with XRender, Trendy Weekly, and my blog, I maintained 6 products in 2023. MiaoYan’s stars increased from 3.5k to 5k, with 6 releases in total; Pake’s stars went from 9.8k to 20.9k, with 12 releases in total. Including my previously open-sourced Weex Ui, my code-related open source works have accumulated 38K stars and 4600 followers.
This year marks my ninth year in open source, from which I’ve learned a lot, met many friends, and driven myself to learn how to create useful products and apply open source experience to my work and team management. However, in the second half of this year, most of my spare time was spent on home decoration, so I had less time for coding open source projects on weekends. I hope to spend more time on open source in 2024, creating useful things for everyone to use.
IV. What useful content have you produced?
Using Twitter as a Notepad
Twitter followers increased from 22k in 2022 to 74k in 2023. Every morning, I post about a nice tool I saw the day before, some interesting tinkering, updates on open-source products, recent articles, reflections, learning, and even dishes I’ve cooked. I don’t like the influencer atmosphere, seeking attention, arguing over issues, or following trends blindly. Twitter is more like a place for me to communicate with like-minded friends for me.
Treating Weekly Updates as a Circle of Friends
Trendy Weekly originated from a flag set at a team meeting in 2020. In 2023, I produced 52 issues, accumulating to 163 issues in total, published on both the intranet Yuque and the internet. It compiles the technology learning, trendy tools, books, and movies I encountered over the week. It’s more like a weekly habit, choosing the cover image is quite like posting on a circle of friends. It’s precisely the cover images that inspire me to go out, take beautiful photos, and attract a group of interested friends to communicate, which is great.
Treating the Blog as a Garden
In 2023, I was more diligent in blogging than before, partly because I gave more public speeches and gradually incorporated elements of life into my blog. This year, I wrote a total of 16 blog posts, long and short, abstract and concrete, putting some worthy content here, slowly turning it into a garden. Readers can come in and take their time looking around, discussing and exchanging ideas on topics of interest, which is very interesting.
Work
Having worked for 8 years since graduation, time has indeed flown by. From being the new, young member to gradually becoming one of the veterans in the department, I’m fortunate that every year, the work I’ve done has been both enjoyable and challenging, providing me with continuous motivation through solving difficult problems. This time, I’d like to share some of the challenging tasks I’ve undertaken at work this year.
V. What significant changes have occurred in the team?
Doubling the team size: From 30 members (24 full-time + 6 SP) in 2022 to 58 members (36 full-time + 22 SP) now, organized into 4 groups according to job functions, we’ve cultivated 2 outstanding first-line TeamLeaders, and 2 group leaders are also gradually making their mark.
Role transformation: Many team members have transitioned from front-end engineers to product engineers, possessing a strong product sense, capable of drafting prototypes and interactions, solving problems in a productized manner, and collaborating across multiple teams, showing significant growth.
Atmospheric change: Continuously adopting the open-source community approach for team building, pushing for an engineering culture, bi-weekly technical sharing sessions are full and engaging, and monthly OneOnOne communications are progressively established. There’s no sense of hierarchy, with a focus more on technology itself. Issues are pointed out directly, and with an increasing number of younger members, the atmosphere has become more relaxed and direct.
VI. What different kinds of work have you done?
Acting as a professional server-side engineer: This year, we established a dedicated Node backend team, taking over the company’s external gateway integration and open capabilities, providing service interfaces for industry Java backends. Leveraging the advantage of our product engineers, we turned these tasks into a workbench, utilizing AI capabilities for efficiency improvement, ultimately doubling the efficiency compared to before, saving considerable human costs. The productization made it simpler and more accessible for products, development, and testing to collaborate. However, transitioning from front-end to backend poses a significant challenge in terms of stability and comprehensive business capabilities, which we’ve focused on improving in the past six months.
Acting as an independent entrepreneur: With the surge in AI this year, we formed an AI virtual group with innovative team members, spending a lot of time integrating AI with business scenarios, from rapid experimentation with demos to productized capabilities for mass production. We applied AI extensively in business areas with strong pain points, scalable demands, and low marginal costs, eventually leading to business units actively seeking AI solutions to their problems, transforming the team into problem-solving full-stack engineers without strict role definitions.
Adopting foreign habits in work: With the pandemic easing and increased investment in internationalization, we gradually formed a dedicated international front-end team. Moving away from domestic development modes and interaction habits, we adapted to local user behaviors in multilingual, multi-timezone, and multicurrency scenarios, trying community-proven technical solutions.
Acting as a data analyst: Data is often used to identify issues, but the challenge lies not in the lack of data but in the absence of effective analysis methods. This year, we worked on productizing business operational data, user traffic data, open tracking data validation, and performance smoothness diagnostic tools. We’re learning business methods of data analysis and intentionally using the front-end perspective to find better ways to present and analyze data, helping to uncover hidden problems.
VII. What personal growth and regrets have you experienced?
Growth: After leading the team through numerous challenges in 2022 and helping solve significant problems for the business, I was directly promoted to the next level at the beginning of 2023. This year required a higher level of demand and capability, but fortunately, I had the support of many like-minded partners who provided silent assistance in tackling tough issues, from whom I learned many technical and methodological approaches.
Regrets: On one hand, due to a multitude of tasks and frequent technical discussions, my time management was suboptimal, leading to less coding time, which is usually a relaxing activity for me. On the other hand, apart from cycling, my exercise was minimal this year, and I didn’t read as much as I would have liked. Moving forward, I realize more than ever the importance of maintaining a healthy body and an active mind, which is a slight regret for me.
Conclusion
Before writing this article, I pondered over what word best describes my 2023, eventually settling on “Follow Your Heart” — doing more of what I want to do, acting according to my own desires or interests, uninhibited by external constraints or influences. Perhaps this is the essence of life.
I hope to embark on more unique endeavors in 2024, living more interestingly even on ordinary days, and I hope the same for you.