2014 felt both slow and fast for me. This year, one foot had already stepped into the working world, waiting for the other to follow. Here is a recap of the major events of my 2014 – archiving the past and embracing a new future.

1. Read some books.

   1.1 Wu Xiaobo’s “Great Defeats” complete collection

   1.2 Nanpai Sanshu’s “TheErta Tomb Notes”

   1.3 Went through “The Beauty of Programming” once

   1.4 Went through “Erta Programmer Interview Bible” once [for job hunting]

   1.5 Read parts of “Effective C++”

   1.6 Accepted all LeetCode problems.

2. On April 17th, I excitedly joined Microsoft Research Asia’s Innovation Engineering Group as an intern.

   This was a rare opportunity in my life. I stumbled into a top-tier technology and research company (research institute), where I wrote code for half a year. The growth, both internal and external, had a profound impact on me. Before this, I thought I was a decent coder, but the two words I encountered most frequently there were: standards, and why.

   Looking back, the MSRA experience will influence my entire life. I sincerely thank my mentors: Genduan and Chaowa for their help.

3. As a Dev, I found my girlfriend in May 2014 – what a joyful thing! I could finally do object-oriented programming.

4. Job hunting phase

   I tossed and turned during that period. It reminded me of a blog post by Liang Bin, the operator of PennyJob: Rejected by a Hundred Companies.

   Although there were some offers here and there, the pressure was immense – something only I could truly understand.

5. October 8th, internship at Yuanfudao (Ape Question Bank).

   This is a startup company – a group of ambitious and talented people working together to do something cool and disruptive. My mentor was DevTang, a well-known iOS expert. What this company brought me was a refreshing experience. As a newcomer, being in a startup exposed me to so many things beyond technology yet closely related to it – knowledge that will benefit me for life.

6. Travel

   Visited Shidu. | Visited Beidaihe. | Visited Tianjin. | Visited Qingdao. | Visited Hong Kong.

   

What’s next? When I resigned, my senior colleague asked me, what are you going to do next? Indeed, what am I going to do next? I couldn’t answer, but I hope my 2015 can include the following items:

1. Travel

   1.1 Visit Harbin [Done] | 1.2 Visit Tibet | 1.3 Visit Yunnan [Done]

2. Consistently maintain my personal blog for technical learning and sharing, and write high-quality posts [Done – should be able to keep it up, though quality will improve gradually].

3. Write higher-quality code and contribute on GitHub. Hopefully one of my projects can get 100 stars.

4. Open-source a portal system based on ThinkPHP [Done, though not yet open-sourced].

5. Think about my future and focus on mastering a specific technology.

6. Read some proper books:

   6.1 Wu Jun’s “Civilization and Light”

   6.2 [Canadian] Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath”

   6.3 Finish “High Output Management” by Andy Grove

   6.4 Finish “Effective C++”

   6.5 “Predictably Irrational” [Done]

7. Study English properly and aim for independent international travel.

8. Redo all LeetCode problems from scratch.