Personal Review on Coinidea's Blog

[Year-End Review]My 2017

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 07:25:24 +0000

Time flies, and 2017 has finally come to an end. To be honest, I have some mixed feelings about writing summaries.

1. Technology:

1. Frontend Tech Stack:

1.1 Went through VUE once and basically got started with it;
1.2 Had some exposure to Fis3;

2.1 Learned Yii 2.0 and implemented some simple projects;
2.2 Upgraded from ThinkPHP 3.x to ThinkPHP 5;

3.1 During the middle of the year, I solved several dozen LeetCode problems, but didn’t keep it up. Back in 2015 I should have finished them all, but now there are many new problems. I also picked up STL, Vector, etc. again.
3.2 The proudest achievement this year was working with OpenCV, implementing a BOW image classification algorithm, and also using OpenCV-based decision trees, SVM, etc.

4.1 I had already gone through CDH back in 2015. The most rewarding thing this year was getting ElasticSearch up and running with approximately 150 million records, including tokenization, mapping, indexing, and aggregation. Going through this whole process was very fulfilling.

2. Travel:

I’m a bit embarrassed to say — including business trips, I only went to Shanghai, Nanjing, and Qingdao. Just these three cities. But I finally made it to Shanghai Disneyland, which was nice, just way too crowded.

3. Coinidea:

Did it take off? I don’t think so. It didn’t go particularly well. I’ve built dozens of websites, WebApps, and APIs of various sizes, but I feel very lost and don’t know which direction to take next. I’ve been making some attempts recently and hope that new doors will open for me.

Hopes for Next Year

Android — I studied it before but never followed through.
Develop and publish a WeChat Mini Program.
Study and learn PostgreSQL.
Further study data mining and deep learning algorithms.

That’s it, no grand wishes. Setting low goals is good for everyone :)

[Year-End Review] My 2016 -- One Year After Graduation

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 16:32:42 +0000

Written at Graduation

One year ago, I officially graduated and entered the workforce. – Written at Graduation

I’m grateful for the words my past self left me: “As long as your spirit never dies, life keeps running on the road.”

If I were to leave a message for next year’s me, it would be: “Persist, be strong, be resilient.”

This year, I got some of the things I wanted, but I also paid a heavy price. While chasing those things, I suddenly realized that the health of my family is what matters most.

Indeed, when the sunlight shines down, what could be happier than simply being alive?

– DevHu, recorded on July 2, 2016, still in a rented apartment

January 4, 2018 update: Due to reasons I’d rather not explain, I’ll use this post as my 2016 year-end review.

[Year-End Review] My 2015

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 13:56:14 +0000

Just like that, 2015 is gone, and today is the first day of 2016. The most fulfilling thing I did today was donating a big bag of clothes I had accumulated over my college years to the school. I’m a strange person – I often don’t throw away old things, which makes moving extremely troublesome. I once heard about a concept called organizing through “cut, let go, and separate.” So I tried discarding my old junk and clutter to reorganize my life.

It’s been about half a year since I started working and entered the workforce. I thought I was well-prepared, but I still struggled. It’s like estimating project scope – there’s a law that says no matter how you estimate the workload, you’ll always underestimate by one-third of the time, even if you account for this very law.

In my 2014 year-end review, I mentioned:

I hope to accomplish the following items in 2015:

Travel

1.1 Go to Harbin [Done]
1.2 Go to Tibet
1.3 Go to Yunnan [Done]
Continue learning and sharing technical knowledge on my personal blog, and write high-quality posts [Done, should be able to keep it up, though quality will improve gradually].

Fortunately, the blog’s daily UV has grown from 1-2 visitors to over ten. A couple of posts have pretty high traffic, and one of them currently appears on the first page of Baidu search results for the keyword “Yii Redis,” which makes me very happy – even though it’s the last result on the first page.
Continue writing higher quality code and contribute on GitHub, hoping one of my projects can reach 100 Stars.

This one failed. My highest cumulative Stars on GitHub is only around 20. I hope to work harder.
Open-source a portal system based on ThinkPHP [Done, but not open-sourced].
Think about my future and focus deeply on a specific technology.

The road ahead is long; I shall search high and low.
Read some quality books:

6.1 Wu Jun’s “Civilization and Enlightenment”
```
 Purchased but didn't read much.
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6.2 Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath”
```
 Not completed.
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6.3 Finish “High Output Management” by Andrew Grove
```
 Not completed.
```
6.4 Finish “Effective C++”
```
 Not completed.
```
6.5 “Predictably Irrational” [Done]
Study English properly and aim for independent travel abroad.

Not completed.
Redo all LeetCode problems from scratch.

Partially completed, solved some problems using PHP.

Beyond that, the things that made me happiest:

Read some books: “Zero to One,” “Don’t Make Me Think,” “The First Line of Code: Android”
CoinIdea got a nice redesign [designed independently, using AI for graphics] – feeling better and better about it.
While my patience, temper, and temperament still have room for improvement, there has been some progress.
I’m on the path to learning Android.
Gained new insights into PHP and MySQL.
I typed so many words:

OK, now let me look ahead to 2016. This is bound to be a critical year. It seems like something big happens in my life every 4-5 years. Just Face It.

Practice English and pass the TOEIC exam.
Get started with iOS, deepen Android learning and application; advance in PHP and MySQL, and develop an OA system using Yii.
I hope the people around me pass their English exams smoothly.
May my parents stay healthy.
Read “Civilization and Enlightenment.”
Finish reading “PHP, MySQL, and Web Development” and “PHP Advanced and Object-Oriented Programming.”
Hope to pick up C# and WorldWind again.
Make some breakthroughs in data visualization.
Hope that CoinIdea, which I maintain in my spare time, keeps getting better.
I hope to achieve the unfulfilled wishes from last year.

Not being greedy – just these. Number four is a blessing.

[Year-End Review] My 2014

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 05:49:26 +0000

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.

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

Travel

1.1 Visit Harbin [Done] | 1.2 Visit Tibet | 1.3 Visit Yunnan [Done]
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].
Write higher-quality code and contribute on GitHub. Hopefully one of my projects can get 100 stars.
Open-source a portal system based on ThinkPHP [Done, though not yet open-sourced].
Think about my future and focus on mastering a specific technology.
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]
Study English properly and aim for independent international travel.
Redo all LeetCode problems from scratch.