2013 was an amazing year in many ways for my personal life. To recap, the top story of 2013 was of course the birth of our son, Shopoth. And then, we bought our first house, paid off our car-loan and ended the year with a much needed vacation, that too to Bangladesh where we spent some quality time with the families.
2013 was my year of learning Haskell. I can’t claim to be a seasoned Haskell programmer yet. But I think I learned a lot of new concepts that you only see once you’re left in the unchartered territory of a functional programming language. So, in 2014, Haskell still remains a the language I want to get better at.
I’d like to change a few things in 2014 in terms of my career. It’s been almost 8 years since I’ve been developing web apps on the job. It’s been exciting and I feel overwhelmed when I look back at how far the industry has matured over the years. However, at the same time, in 2014, I’d like to focus on my soft-skills, especially on my negotiation skills. The target is to practice negotiation before I need to negotiate with others, so I’m well prepared to share my opinion about a topic. And afterwards, do a retrospective to find out room for improvement.
In 2013, I also got a PhD admission at the University of Calgary. So far, I’ve enrolled into only a single course. But the target is to publish one paper on API evolution by the end of this summer.
2014 is the first year of my thirties. I guess, I should start checking off items from my bucket list from now on. Still debating which one to target in 2014: a) learn to fly an airplane, b) start my own side project. Will keep you posted when I’ve made my mind. Happy 2014 till then.
Oh, before I conclude, here’s some stats about my open source contribution in 2013:
- 40K+ downloads of MvcMailer
- 400+ downloads of TextHelper
- 1.5K+ downloads of streamy_csv
- 17K+ visits to my blog
In 2014, I’d like to continue my open source contribution, preferably to some well established projects.