Last year I made an analogous post about 2018 going into 2019. Throughout 2019 I often read it back to see how was I doing, was I on track? Then I remember I made other, numerous, lists of things I wanted to do in 2019. It turns out that I had too many items in too many lists and somehow none was overlapping with my life.
I’m pretty sure the same story will repeat in 2020 but it’s fun nonetheless. So here we go, the best and worst of 2019!
MATHS
I finished a good chunk of Sernesi’s Geometria 1 in the first part of the year, effectively completing what’s a modern “Geometria 1” course. I was so braindead after it that I decided to leave it for greener pasture. That included re-reading Halmos’ Set Theory (to be honest, I come back to it quite often) and Axler’s Linear Algebra Done Right.
If we broaden the boundaries of Maths to include a bit of Theoretical CS, this year I’ve studied a modicum of Lambda Calculus, writing my share of Turing machines and such.
GIREVOY SPORT
I don’t think I’ve even lifted a bell in the second part of the year. My body feels weak and I really, really, need to get back on track.
LEISURE
This year I spent three weeks in Mexico, both as a tourist and as a boyfriend visitng my girlfriend’s family and friends. I won’t lie, it was a huge culture shock. I thought I was an adaptable guy, turns out I’m just a spoiled European. What shocked me the most was probably the general dirt and shabbines in some parts of the country. In this sense Merida was definitely the worst. Walking around the city one has a sense that it could collapse any second. Another thing that grinded my gears was that almost nothing works. As a programmer, this feeling is certainly enhanced, one probably notices flaws and glitches more often. What I mean by that? it took us days and multiple people to make the washing machine actually work. Going to an airbnb where the heating is… off. To turn it on one needs to crawl into a cave-tunnel-like corridor with a match and literally light-up the heater. Want to take a shower? the water might turn off after 3 minutes. Thirsty? the water is not potable, want to go buy a jug? “Sorry, we ran out for the day”. And a million of other things.
On the bright side the tourist spots are insane: Chichen-itzà, Teotihuacan, Uxmal, the museums in Mexico City, are all enjoyable. The food is plenty and cheap, especially in CDMX, and it’s not hard to find vegan options. If you’re not latin american it really shows, at times I felt almost like an invasor, it was a weird feeling of fremdlichkeit where I was the fremde.
In June I went to ZuriHac with a colleague. It was a great experience I detailed in another post.
In August I went to Koln to visit friends and my girlfriend’s family. I’ve been there 5 times in the past 3 years and I still find places where I haven’t been that are just great. This time it was a Japanese restaurant in the Turkish quarter and the Wallraf museum. The Belgian quarter was a bit of a bummer to be honest, I expected to see way more graffiti and art.
While eating at that Japanese restaurant I noticed a familiar face at another table: il signor verde! He’s the owner of a vegan restaurant around Sulz by the same name which unfortunately closed this year. The Wallraf was, for lack of better words, just insane. I begged Delie for a quick visit (she doesn’t like museums) and we ended up staying for like 4 hours. I spent half that time at the first floor only.
Delie went back to Mexico for a couple of months and came back with her cat: Volta. So now we are three in the house.
We don’t have anything planned for 2020. I expect to visit Switzerland more often and certainly one or two trips to Koln.
My Go journey didn’t go very far. I play one or two 9x9 on my phone each day but I didn’t play many serious 19x19 games in a while. I’ve also ditched Starcraft and gaming in general. The games I played the most this year are probably Stellaris and Mortal Kombat, combining the two would give me 30~ hours of game time. The game I enjoyed the most however was Gris. Just go play Gris.
In terms of reading, I read 46 books. My goal was to go for 24 books and I want to strive for that in 2020. I want to read less and read better. The highlights of 2019 reading escapades were certainly related to the Islam books (an history of Islam, a few old Sufi books, an Ali Shariat pamphlet) and “Holy the Firm” which I read twice. In terms of programming “The little Typer” and “Essentials of programming languages” were both great reads.
In the latter part of the year I was burning out pretty badly. A colleague suggested I find some sort of creative outlet. It’s nothing new, I used to play guitar before my hands got smashed, but I never found anything quite like it that I thought I might enjoy. One weekend I just picked up a pencil and started drawing. I’ve been drawing almost daily for the past 3 months and really enjoying it.
LANGUAGE
My German is growing slowly but surely. What helped a lot this year was watching everything with German subtitles, even the German stuff.
PROGRAMMING
@home
I got to write what Julia Evans calls “impossible programs”, that is, programs I didn’t think I could write before trying: machine learning algorithms, a neural network, and several interpreters from the “Essentials of programming languages” book. I don’t know what I’ll write in 2020, probably something related to either networking or databases, we’ll see!
In terms of CS, getting deeper in Lambda Calculus and formal languages will probably be my next step.
Encouraged by a colleague I started attending meetups. I now regularly go to two meetups: Open source Saturday and Hakell Milano. This has been nice and I learned a ton by interacting with other passionate developers. It’s also in stark contrast to another trend I had this year: the hermit trend. I ditched Twitter, Mastodon, and most other platforms I was on. Another thing I’m trying to do is to not answer every single email that comes my way. Some emails just don’t need answering.
@work
The highlight of the year was being able to take 6 months with a colleague to write a single microservice and the related integration patches. It’s incredible the quality of work two humans can do when they’re left alone to think, without being micro-managed by scrum and other managery. Lately I’ve been assigned to mentor a young and rising star in the dev world which is also a great gift.
The proposal I sent for the BEAM lite was not accepted and I realized I don’t really have much to say to anyone in this industry. I’d rather take time to work on the stuff I enjoy, draw, and be with my girlfriend.
For 2020 my goal is to be able to push back work. It might seem a weird thing to say, until you’re swamped with 20 tasks and your direct manager doesn’t even know about it. I’ll close with a very important advice: say NO to work!