Goodbye 2023

2023 has ended, and we got a whole new year in front of us.

It has been a good run, it’s probably the year I’ve been the most active with development in my life.

Here’s a look back at the past year in no particular order.

GitHub Activity

First, let’s compare my GitHub activity from 2022 to 2023, because that’s the only thing that matters as a developer.

As you can see, I’ve contributed more than twice as much compared to 2022. Which is pretty cool. Though my shower still uses GitHub more than me.

Bird

I made a little Twitter/X clone named Bird. I’ve made multiple iterations of it throughout the year, let me share you the technologies and libraries I used for the current iteration.

I used Next.js for the framework, using the new server components stuff.

For the UI I used shadcn/ui, which is amazing, I love how instead of just being a package you install from NPM. You actually copy/paste their code into your codebase or use their CLI which does it for you, which means you own the code and can modify it to your liking.

For authentication I used Clerk, Clerk was really simple to setup and use. And I didn’t have to manage database stuff, OAuth, tokens, etc. It’s all handled by Clerk.

To store data, I used DrizzleORM which provides a really nice developer experience, it’s quite new but its still really good. It’s type-safe, and doesn’t require a codegen step unlike Prisma. For the actual database I used Turso, which is a SQLite, edge focused, database provider.

I also used Bun for the runtime, it’s really fast compared to Node.js, and I like how it provides a runtime, package manager, bundler, and test runner all in one. Though Bun still has some rough edges it’s still really good.

Advent of Code

This is the first year I participated in Advent of Code. I used Rust for all the solutions, and its pretty fun, but I did quit on day 5 because I was too lazy to do it.

The difficulty was also higher this year compared to the past, according to some people on Reddit.

Switch to Neovim

This year was also the year I switched to Neovim, I’ve heard its pretty good, especially from people like ThePrimeagen and I’ve got to say, it’s pretty good.

It was a little hard at the beginning, with all the new motions and keybinds and stuff, but once you start getting the hang of it, you get a lot faster and more productive.

I use Arch btw

This was also the year I switched to Linux. First, I decided to dual boot Windows and Pop!_OS. Which was pretty nice. But I decided I wanted to go deeper, and deeper I did go.

I installed Arch, a lightweight, general purpose, rolling-release Linux distribution.

When you boot into Arch you just get thrown into a terminal, no windows, no GUI, no nothing. It took a few days to get everything setup, but it was worth it. I’m now super productive as I’ve switched to a tiling window manager (Hyprland), and it’s fantastic.

I simply love how you can customize everything to your liking, and it uses way less resources compared to Windows, the difference in performance was huge, especially due to the fact that my computer isn’t the most powerful out there.

The next chapter

It’s been a good run, but now it’s time for 2024. I look forward to what the new year has to offer.

Goodbye!