Happy new year to you people! Let this year be the one that will see you succeed in all fields that are important to you, should it be family, work, friends, projects… Anyway, full of happiness. :)
So. This post is kind of a “me” post in a way I’ll mostly talk about what I’ve done in 2013 (web-related) and what I’d like to do in 2014. Let’s take this as an opportunity for all to look back at 2013 and see what we’ve done, shall we?
2013 is the year I…
… got hired.
After several years of school — the last two being in a work-based study (half part school, half part work) — I got hired at Tootici (Moirans, France) as a frontend developer as a full-time job.
Basically we create a platform aiming at promoting local proximity businesses and I am the one in charge of the frontend rendering. On the menu: HTML templating with Twig, CSS architecture with Sass & Compass, some JavaScript as well as a little bit of PHP on the Symfony 2 framework. Very interesting work in a very cool team so big deal for me. :)
… attented to a conf as a speaker.
Actually 2013 is the year I attented a conf for the first time at all. Attending to a conference was a great experience; being able to be there as a speaker was even more awesome. Last june I had the opportunity to talk about Sass at KiwiParty (Strasbourg, France) in front of a very receptive audience.
More than that, I could meet all those cool folks from Twitter for real this time, including the whole Alsacreations team led by Raphaël Goetter. Many thanks to them, the event was wonderful. I hope to be able to attend it in next June. :)
… got interested in JavaScript.
After about 3 years doing nothing else than CSS, I finally got interested in JavaScript. It’s about time! Actually I’ve come to a point with CSS where I don’t enjoy it as I used to. Don’t get me wrong: there are still topics I don’t fully understand in CSS (z-index, flexbox anyone?) but that doesn’t stop me from doing my job at — dare I say it — a quite honorable level.
Anyway in late 2013 I’ve started playing around JavaScript only to discover it is one hell of a language once you find a way to structure it. I think the reason I’ve been discouraged from JS so far is because it’s not that easy to organize. Things got better after I read this article from Chris Coyier about using the Literal Object pattern (incorrectly named “module pattern”).
Then things got even better once I started understanding what the prototype is, and how to use it. I’ve been practicing a little bit with this so far with Countdown.js and CRUD.js. Comments welcome. ;)
… launched Browserhacks.
Browserhacks has been my first real project, with a purpose, issues, versions, features and so on. Launched in early 2013 with Tim Pietrusky we are very glad with what we’ve come up with so far (which is even more true since the fresh redesign from Joshua Hibbert).
We have many plans for the future of Browserhacks, especially since Fabrice Weinberg joined the core team when we moved over to a Grunt-based workflow. The only thing missing is time.
But worry not my friend, and stay tuned because we won’t drop this project that soon. We have too much to do to give up now. Oh and of course, if you feel like contributing…
In 2014, I’d like to …
… attend to another conf, possibly as a speaker.
If I were brave I’d say “let’s have a talk in English!”. The truth is I feel very uncomfortable when it comes to speak in English. Ironically enough I have written about 60 articles in English during 2013. One day I’ll be comfident enough to do it, but for now I think I’ll keep going with French talks.
However, I’d like to attend an English conference. My heart tends towards Smashing Conf which looks absolutely awesome and is not that far from where I live.
… get better at JavaScript, obviously!
Actually getting good enough not to be ashamed to call myself a frontend developer would be a good start. Everytime I say I’m a “frontend dev” I always feel like that’s not entirely true because I am not a great JavaScript developer. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
Final words
In any case, I hope 2014 will be the year I’ll keep doing what I like to do with such a passion. I think that’s the most important.
What about you people? Was 2013 a good year? What are your plans for 2014? :)