Best of 2024: My Year in Review

If I had to define my 2024 in one word, it would be: Change.

In 2023, I got burned out and sick. And when I was laid off in early 2024, I felt both worried and relieved. I needed some time off.

That layoff taught me valuable lessons about life, career, and money.

My coding side

2024 felt like a rollercoaster.

After getting laid off and sending dozens of applications, I decided to take some time off to take care of my health. A mini-retirement.

After the radio silence and a few “thanks, maybe later” replies, I started freelancing with a small software agency. That helped me stay afloat for a month or two without running out of savings.

In 2024, I doubled down on my online presence.

I created two video courses on Udemy: here and here. I hired Microsoft’s Copilot as my assistant to create the promotional materials. All the content and recordings were made by me. A human.

My career reflections

Being laid off gave me time to reflect on my career after over 10 years of non-stop work.

I wrote about the lessons my first job taught me about coding and life and shared 8 lessons for new developers, like in a free mentoring session.

Last year the coding world went nuts when Devin, “the first AI software engineer,” was released and I gave my predictions for coding in 2034.

If you’re reading this from the future, let me know if I nailed it with my predictions. By the way, do you have flying cars or are you still dreaming about them?

I created a 7-day email course to share the lessons I wish I had known to survive a career in software engineering. I share what I’d tell my younger self starting his first professional coding job.

And I moved my Monday Links series to an email list. Every other week, you won’t get Monday Links, but Friday Links in your inbox. For free.

My most read posts

If you missed any of them, here are my five most read posts from 2024:

  1. How to Test Logging Messages with FakeLogger
  2. It Seems the C# Team Is Finally Considering Supporting Discriminated Unions
  3. Testing DateTime.Now Revisited: .NET 8.0 TimeProvider
  4. Two new LINQ methods in .NET 9: CountBy and Index
  5. I applied at a FAANG and failed: Three interviewing lessons

My writing side

I will remember 2024 as the year I went all in on my writing.

After writing for more than 5 years, I took my first writing class. That gave me momentum to keep the writing ball rolling. I even created a tag /misc to write about everything outside programming and software engineering.

Starting on November 1st, I began writing daily on my blog. Those daily posts fueled my writing everywhere else.

LinkedIn

After months of inactivity in 2023, I revived my LinkedIn account from Zombieland.

I challenged myself to write 100 short-form native posts. I started with 1 post a week, then 2, then 3… I doubled my follower count and had two or three “viral” posts. Those are vanity metrics. But the main benefit? The fear of writing in social media is gone!

It turns out LinkedIn is not that cringy when we follow the right strategy.

dev.to

In 2024, I kept reposting some of my posts on dev.to.

The dev.to team featured three of my posts in the Top7 posts of the week. These ones:

  1. Four Lessons My First Job as a Software Engineer Taught Me About Coding and Life
  2. I Applied at a FAANG and Failed — Three Interviewing Lessons
  3. I Don’t Use “Pushy” Questions in Code Reviews Anymore. This Is What I Do Instead

Parting Thought

Taking some time off to take care of my health was the best decision I made in 2024. Being physically healthy spreads to all other areas of our life.

And definitely, Monday mornings don’t feel the same when you wake up to do something you love.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding in 2025!

Don’t miss my best of 2023, 2022, and 2021.