2023 Wrap-up

Wrapping up the year, it would be good to write a short summary.

Lots of Bazel (and other build systems), tooling, and automation. Bazel is quite complex and surprisingly rough on some edges, but I think it is a very powerful tool.

I went through (and survived) two rounds of lay-offs at work this year; technically, 3, but the middle was focused on a single product. I'm not going to dig into details or opinions, other than I'm quite unhappy with the tech industry as a whole.

Read and experimented with some of the basic foundations of LLMs, plus code generation and text and image generation (mostly ChatGPT and DALL-E 3). Despite being too brute-force based, I think LLMs and the AI topic, in general, can significantly change tech. From frequently using GitHub Copilot, to almost daily using ChatGPT [1], and helping friends and family with image-related tasks, it has already changed quite a few things in my everyday life.

Coded a decent amount of Javascript (but little Typescript) and Python (including Starlark, Bazel's flavor), and a bit of Go.

I'm ramping up on book reading (tech and non-tech, fiction and non-fiction), but it's one area I could do way more.

I also read a lot of articles, but I feel there is an information overload as of late. It takes a lot of work to keep up with everything, so I'm iterating on my sources, filtering criteria, and even time spent (e.g., reading a book instead).

Fewer courses watched, but more talks: Strange Loop, GOTO, InfoQ, and miscellaneous individual talks. But I miss the networking part of a physical conference.

I deleted my Twitter account. I don't want to be part of the crappy place that Elon is converting it into, so that party is over for me. For the moment, my only social presence is at Mastodon.

[1] I'm sure they are fully aware, but Google's biggest concern should be the fact that chat conversations with ChatGPT are a much better user experience than a search box. Of course, it's not yet useful in all scenarios, but one way or another, we'll get there.