The Year 2018: As The Last Sun Sets

Year 2018: As The Last Sun Sets
This is not a year-end review as such but a look-back on my year as a family man and a developer in 2018.

The Kick-Off

I kicked off my year with a job switch and started working from home full-time, along with shifting house (a couple of them actually) from one part of Karachi to another as my wife also started her university. It was a crazy time because shifting homes is no fun!

The Experiment Year

2018 was a experiment year for me as I was trying to learn and do new things and failing in most of them sadly. I will skip the details as I did some pretty lame stuff to be honest 😀

The Work From Home

I used to believe in work-life balance bull-crap but in 2018 as I was working from home and doing pretty well. I believe I had a good “work-life” balance as I was working one moment and having family time another. It really didn’t bother me when I was working or when I was siting with family. I always had time for work and I had always time for family.

The Drawback

There have been drawbacks to working alone and at home for me, after years and years commuting to work, interacting with colleagues and peers. These drawbacks were not a great deal but they did affect the speed of my productivity. I struggled when I wanted an opinion from someone I trusted. When you have an office to go to then you have many co-workers you can interact and exchange ideas with. But in my case I’d either summon the old friend pen and paper and jolt down ideas and if that didn’t work I’d give one of my developer friends from university class or old company a call and share ideas. It always worked for me. Thanks guys for picking up my call!

The Loss

We all know and understand the fact that ups and downs are a part of our life. If life gives us joy, it can give us sorrow too. 2018 was the year, after years of marriage we got the best possible news. Before we knew it, it was the worst possible news. We were shattered by the sad news of a missing heart-beat. Nonetheless, we are still hopeful to experience parenthood.

The Exodus

Almost, nearly, approximately, a few months short may be, of a decade! I lived and thrived in a city far away from home, felt just like home. Karachi made me what I’m today. I’m thankful to the city and the people who came into my life, for giving me quality education, amazing friends, opportunity to work and grow as a person and as a professional developer.

The Journey Ahead

In the year 2019 I will be working as a Government officer and giving my services to my hometown university and giving back to my community’s youth in form of free knowledge-sharing sessions, paid offline web development trainings during week-ends.

Thank you for your time reading this post. Comment below and tell me about three important things happened in your life in 2018 and what are your plans in 2019.

Wish you a very Happy New Year!

Junaid Qadir

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12 responses to “The Year 2018: As The Last Sun Sets”

  1. The Year 2019: As The Last Sun Sets - Junaid Qadir Avatar
    The Year 2019: As The Last Sun Sets – Junaid Qadir

    I started writing these year-end reviews starting last year. I really enjoyed writing it and got some great feedback from friends and family. Thank you, everyone. You can read it over here. Continuing the tradition, here’s my recap of 2019:
    Things That Didn’t Work
    Community Service
    I kick-started 2019 by moving to my hometown and starting a new job. The Job is doing pretty good. I had plenty of free time during weekends which I wanted to dedicate to my community, so I stared a free programming course at a local community center. I’m still not sure if it was the place, because the course was free or maybe it was me. The course was a total disaster.
    Machine Learning
    I challenged myself to get hands-on with Machine Learning. I even purchased learning material spent time to learn but turned out its way difficult than I expected. So that didn’t work as well.
    Health
    I have been getting severe migraines on and off, for the past few years now. This year was the worst for my health so far thanks to migraines. Once the migraine kicks in, it can last up to days, four days was the maximum streak I got this year. I can’t explain how unbearable and unbearably painful it is. trust me its one’s worst nightmare.
    I totally failed to manage my migraines this year.
    Writing
    In terms of writing, 2018 was a great year. I still get feedback from one of my most-read and well-received articles. This year, I managed to write only one article and that’s pretty bizarre for someone who claims to be a writer or a blogger. I’m truly ashamed that I didn’t write more in 2019.
    Things That Worked
    Freelancing
    I can say this year was a good year for freelancing for me because I managed to complete a couple of projects. I’m looking forward for more in 2020.
    Side Projects
    This year I open-sourced a Laravel package. I developed this project back in 2018 and kept it secret. I did use it in my side projects to help me with repetitive CRUD generation tasks though. More on that in the Open Source Contribution section.
    I’m still working on a couple of secret side projects some of them may be for wealth generation and some for FOSS.
    Open Source Contribution
    Laravel CRUD Scaffold is basically Laravel’s make commands on steroids. It’s a pretty opinionated package which generates models, controllers, views, form requests, migrations, and even factories by just passing in a model name.
    Please give it a try and if you like it do Star it to show your love. You can check it out here. On a side note, as of writing this, I’m working on to rename the project to a bit easy to remember and easy to type name and also writing tests for it to make it more reliable.
    This year I also managed to contribute to Laravel ecosystem. It was a meager one-liner pull request but regardless of the size of the contribution, it made me really happy and proud from inside.
    Self Improvement
    This year I tried to be a bit better of a human than I was in 2018. Next year I’ll try to be even better.
    Social Media Fasting
    This year I reduced my social media usage. Especially, I stopped using Facebook and Instagram. I shared way fewer statuses on WhatsApp than the previous year. But on the contrary, my Twitter, Youtube, Dev.to and StackOverflow usage increased. And I’m pretty happy with the improvement.

    I’m going to observe Social Media Fasting for a month to focus on things that matter more than social media. See you all in a month or may be never. #SocialMedia #SocialMediaFasting #SocialMediaFastingForAMonth— Junaid Qadir (@JunaidQadirB) August 24, 2019

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAutomation
    Okay, the heading is misleading since it is about organizing and version-controlling my dotfiles. I had heard a lot of developers talking about dotfiles and how they benefit them. I did’t pay attention until I saw this tweet from Laracasts:

    A brand new series launches today on Laracasts! I’ve invited a number of guests to, one teacher per episode, teach you what you they know best. First up is @driesvints‘ review of managing dotfiles. https://t.co/tUEYOaa2Yl— Laracasts (@laracasts) October 30, 2019

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsEven though I created all my bash scripts from scratch on my own but this video definitely gave me the motivation I needed. I wrote about how I created my dotfiles in this article. I have a sense of relief after organizing my dotfiles files. Now the process of keeping them synced is automated and they are safely stored in a GitHub private repo. I commit any changes I make on a regular basis.
    The Journey Ahead
    For 2020, I’m keeping my expectations a bit low and I will try to improve upon a few things from 2019 plus I’ll focus on improving my Testing skills using TDD, as much as I possibly can.
    So, that will be all for my year-end review. Wish you a very Happy and a Prosperous New Year!

    Reply
  2. Little Bit About My Free Programming Course at RCDC Turbat and Why It's A Great Opportunity For You To Join – Junaid Qadir

    […] promised in my previous post, I have partnered with one of the oldest community centers of Turbat, RCDC to teach programming […]

    Reply
  3. Mukhtar Alam Avatar
    Mukhtar Alam

    Really great my dear Wish you best of best and so proud of having such a talent in our family.

    Reply
    1. Junaid Qadir Avatar
      Junaid Qadir

      Thank you sir. And Thanks for reading and the encouragement.

      Regards,

      Reply
  4. Nawaz Qadir Avatar
    Nawaz Qadir

    While I was reading your narrative about your past, present and particularly future ambitions and plans, it felt like you should start writing a book. Really it’s a great blog that you have scripted. Keep it up bro, We are and we’ll always be proud of you. As I always say to myself JQ doesn’t accept anything less than perfect. Stay blessed

    Love

    Reply
    1. Junaid Qadir Avatar
      Junaid Qadir

      Thank you so much Nawaz jan. I’m all because of my brothers. Well a book is not my cup of tea as its a huge undertaking. Thanks so much again for reading and taking out time to appreciate.

      Reply
  5. Faisal Avatar
    Faisal

    Awesome dear, Thank you so much for sharing such great publication it..it really deserve a BIG like.

    Reply
    1. Junaid Qadir Avatar
      Junaid Qadir

      Thanks dear!

      Reply
  6. Umme Maha Avatar
    Umme Maha

    Life is a rollercoaster ride..
    It’s nice article.. may you have every blessing u r deprived yet in coming years of ur life. May your all dreams come true.
    Be the candle of knowledge and spread your spark of knowledge in heart of ur students.its great responsibility now.
    Stay blessed my friend

    Reply
    1. Junaid Qadir Avatar
      Junaid Qadir

      Thanks a lot! Aaameen

      Reply
  7. hira asad Avatar
    hira asad

    that is worth reading jq..by a software developer we usually do not find such life scripting bolg posts

    Reply
    1. Junaid Qadir Avatar
      Junaid Qadir

      Thanks Hira! your feedback means a lot to me.

      Reply

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