2020 Annual Summary

At the beginning of 2020, no one anticipated that we would face an unprecedented pandemic that would last a year or more. 2020 is unusual, to me, pandemic, new job, working, challenges, learning, vocabularies, and algorithms are key words of 2020. Time flies and everything will pass, we all hope that tomorrow will be better. For the summary of the past year, I write down these words on the first day of 2021.

Technologies

Learning

I read several books about technology in 2020.

• Finish reading HTTP: The Definitive Guide. Although I don’t use HTTP in everyday work, It’s the first time I dive into a fully-fledged application layer protocol.
• Finish reading The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. It’s a terrific book that inspired me a lot.
• Finish reading The Little Schemer. It’s another amazing book that fascinated me. It imparted to me functional programming, which is a new programming idea that I have never touched. It is no exaggeration to say that Lambda calculates and Y combinator are the most wonderful thing I have ever learned.
• Finish reading The Go Programming Language. Go is a new programming language I learned in 2020. A new language, a new idea.
• Read about half of TCP/IP Illustrated. I plan to read this book for a long time, but the process is slow. Anyway, I must finish reading it in 2021.

Creating

• Wrote DWords, a tool to help you memorize English words. It got 14 stars. This is my first decent open source project, I think it’s a good idea but I did it too simple.
• Wrote vscode-rss, an RSS reader embedded in the vscode. It got 94 stars, which exceeded my expectation. At first, I just wanted to make a simple extension, and the first version had only 475 lines of code. Until one day a friend said in an issue: “Your extension is so nice! I have uninstalled other RSS readers.” Wow! how exciting! Then I have been spent much time improving the extension, adding new features, fixing bugs, and releasing new versions. Besides, I also received many issues and pull requests, including feature requests and bug reports. This is one of the happiest things in 2020.
• Wrote Subsocks, a secure socks5 proxy. It’s a practice project for Go, and it is also a useful tool. I have been using it for a month and I am satisfied with it.
• Wrote cseri, a Lua object serializer that was used in my game project. Now it is fast and stable after fixing several terrible bugs.
• Wrote 25 posts on my blog, including 4 featured posts. Two of them were included in Ruan Yi-Feng’s Technology Lovers Weekly (科技爱好者周刊).

Thank everyone who starred, forked, and watched my tiny projects and who opened issues and pull requests.

In 2020, I have 331 contributions on Github. Last year I said that I hope the contribution panel will be full of green spots in 2020, and now I have done it. As well as the several repositories previously mentioned, I submitted some patches and issues in other repositories such as DIYgod/RSSHub and ginuerzh/gost.

github

Leetcode

I did many algorithmic exercises on Leetcode, Some of them were very hard for me. Going on! I must do much more.

leetcode

English

I kept memorizing words every day and completed a daily plan every day. I also have been reading English articles, nearly every day.

baicizhan

shanbei

In addition, I also read 2 English books: The Little Schemer and The Go Programming Language, as well as several papers. However, depressingly, my English didn’t improve significantly. So many words are confused, memorized one, and then forget other similar ones. I have to repeat these over and over again.

I wrote 4 English posts and 2 translate posts, besides some English notes. I didn’t have enough writing training in 2020.

Reading

I didn’t spend much time reading, in 2020 I only read 4 books.

• Gone with the wind
• 1984
• The bad kids (坏小孩)
• Crime and Punishment

Something Happy

On weekends that are not cold, I like to cycle around Beijing. One day, I ride a bicycle for about 30km, from my residence to Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷), Tian’anmen, Zhengyangmen, Ming City Wall Ruins, Beijing Railway Station, and then back home. Autumn in Beijing is beautiful, the sky is clear and blue, over a peaceful and busy city.

city-wall

In November, I went to Shanghai and I attended a concert of the Hyperbolic Chorus (双曲线合唱团). The singing touched me, it’s so warm and beautiful.

concert

I also met several old friends and talked about life, working, and career. It made me feel not alone and eased my pressure. Thank you, my friends.

Finally

The favorite sentence I learned in 2020 is “life is a journey, not a competition.”. At the beginning of 2020, I found more and more people who were the same age or younger than me achieved much higher achievement than me, which made me very depressed. But now, I understand that don’t compare with others but compare with yourself. It’s enough to stay positive and grow.

I have often lamented the time flies. This winter I saw Orion rises at night for the fourth time in Beijing, which reminded me that this is my fourth year in Beijing. Anyway, sentimentality is meaningless, the most important things are hard-working and enjoy life every day.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, coworkers, and friends for staying with me and give me lots of help in the past year.

2021 has arrived. Happy new year.