Retro and Debug A Year of Code, Resilience, and Debugging

This entry participates in the 2025 New Year Writing Challenge: Reflecting on and Troubleshooting 2024.

---

A Year of Code Conflicts: My 2024 Retrospective

2024 proved that personal growth and professional upheaval can coexist—a bit like debugging live code while your pet cat dances on your keyboard. It was a chaotic, unpredictable, and surprisingly rewarding year. Here's my honest reflection.

---

Victories: My Coding Triumphs

1. My First Open-Source Contribution: I released a command-line tool for automating API documentation. It boasts 12 GitHub stars (11 from me, but still!).
2. TypeScript Mastery (Mostly): I finally grasped generics. Mostly.
3. Public Speaking Debut: I presented at a local tech meetup on “Why Your Side Project Will Never Be Perfect.” A Python developer heckled me. 10/10, would do again.
4. Thirty Blog Posts Published: Including the ever-popular, “How to Survive a Tech Interview Without Crying (Much).”

---

Challenges: The Code That Almost Broke Me

1. Post-Launch Burnout: Three months were dedicated to a habit-tracking app. It garnered 7 downloads (my parents and five test accounts).
2. Imposter Syndrome Strikes Again: Promoted to Senior Developer, I spent weeks questioning my skills. Do I even know how to git push?
3. The Dependency Debacle: Updating Next.js resulted in 14 broken components. My commit message: feat: suffering.

---

Lessons Learned: The Wisdom Gained

1. "Done" Trumps "Perfect": That gathering dust side project? Ship it. Let the internet judge. Failure teaches more than endless refinement.
2. Seek Help Early: Sliding into a senior developer's DMs with “plz explain React Server Components” saved 48 hours of frantic Googling.
3. Self-Worth Beyond Code: Remember that time I accidentally rm -rf'd the staging environment? I still have a job. Turns out humans are more valuable than terminals.

---

Mindset Adjustments

The biggest change? Abandoning the "hustle porn" mindset. I stopped glorifying 80-hour workweeks and started celebrating small wins:

• Bug fixed before the daily standup? Victory latte.
• New CLI shortcut mastered? Meme break time.
• Survived a code review without tears? Level up!

---

2024: My Console.log Year

I didn't have all the answers, but I logged enough progress to see the pattern. Cheers to 2025: fewer undefined moments, more 200 OK responses.

---

The above is the detailed content of Retro and Debug A Year of Code, Resilience, and Debugging. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!