30 Dec 2022
This year’s recap focuses on the latter half of the year, as the first half was uneventful and filled with lockdowns and daily nucleic acid tests in Futian, Shenzhen. At that time, life felt dull and hopeless.
If someone had told me then that my year would become fulfilling and exciting, I would have scoffed.
The turning point began in August.
As usual, I opened Github and released a new version of my casual creation, a Rust Frontmatter parsing library called gray-matter-rs. Disappointed by not reaching my open source goal this year (active community participation), I noticed @Manjusaka sharing some good first issue opportunities related to nerdctl in Zhang Yanfei’s group. I saw this as my chance to engage with the open-source community and gave it a shot.
I carefully submitted my first-ever PR, receiving guidance from experienced community members like @Akihiro Suda. Eagerly awaiting the merge, I felt thrilled watching my code and documentation repeatedly merge into the main branch, leaving a mark in the world.
Surprisingly, by the end of November, I became the Maintainer of nerdctl and a member of the containerd community!
I’d like to thank the community for their enthusiastic guidance. For the first time, I experienced the joy of participating in a community and found a sense of camaraderie that is different from my work as a programmer.
Here are some of my thoughts:
When first learning programming, many people face a dilemma: they don’t know what to do after learning and feel like they haven’t grasped anything. They often seek practical tutorials to deepen their understanding. This issue usually disappears once they start working in real-life scenarios. However, when exploring new fields, this confusion can resurface. It’s not something one frequently encounters at work, and changing jobs won’t necessarily resolve the dilemma. Participating in an open community is an excellent solution, as it provides practical opportunities through others’ needs. By addressing these needs, you can apply what you’ve learned without getting involved in each task. Helping others while enjoying learning is the greatest value I find in the open-source community.
Since then, I’ve participated in discussions for other open-source projects. Although limited by personal energy and consumed by work and life, I haven’t taken many other actions. However, I’m confident I’ll be more active in the community in the new year.
I hope to have more opportunities to practice Rust next year.
Additionally, I achieved the following this year:
Fully adopted NeoVim and successfully introduced it to some friends!
Embraced the Geek lifestyle using Tiling Window Manager and a keyboard!
Actively interacted with Asahi Linux members (mainly @Asahi Lina) and translated an tales-of-the-m1-gpu!
This article was created using my configuration, which can be found at dotfiles.
Last year, I left the QQ platform and disconnected from my hobbyist friends, wandering the online world aimlessly. I began using my dormant Twitter account to cope with the isolation of the pandemic and gained over 800 followers, even though many didn’t follow me for technical topics. I made interesting connections, gained useful perspectives, and joined a WeChat group where I met talented people.
Together with friends, I’ve been:
Memorizing words
Solving algorithm problems
Playing B3D
Facing various exams
Participating in public welfare
My work has been progressing smoothly this year, with supportive leaders and capable colleagues. I survived several company layoffs and passed my first job certification, becoming a senior developer. Nonetheless, my dissatisfaction with income and desire to leave my comfort zone continue to grow.
I recently started dating a lovely girlfriend, adopting a new attitude towards life and re-evaluating my plans. As the country opens up, I’ve recovered from illness and plan to travel to Japan and Europe next year.
Originally, I intended to write a detailed year-end summary, but I found it challenging due to fatigue and writing limitations. This summary concludes here, and I may share my expectations and plans for the new year in a separate article. Wishing all readers good health and happiness!