As 2024 draws close, it’s time for my annual year in review reflection. This tradition helps me analyze and appreciate the various projects and experiences that shaped my year. Let’s dive into what 2024 brought.
This year, I was mostly focused on work, so nothing much happened on this site. I’ll keep this post short.
Work
One thing that might not get enough credit but I believe has been quite significant was the integration of the Vale prose lint tool, which improved Expo docs documentation quality:
- Standardized writing style across 800+ pages
- I did not measure it, but this change reduced the editing/review cycles
- The goal was to create a more consistent reading experience for our users and docs contributors. Hopefully, we’ve reached both
Blog
A significant milestone this year was migrating from Next.js to Astro after three years. The migration brought several benefits:
- Lower maintenance overhead
- Smoother version upgrades (the recent major version upgrade was seamless)
- Simplified content management and minimal theme with the AstroPaper template
- Improved performance
Migrating to Astro isn’t about trying the new shiny framework. Some of the above-mentioned benefits really matter to me in order to keep this blog running in the long run. I’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post.
Popular posts
Occupied in personal and professional life, finding time to write more blog posts didn’t come naturally this year. However, I ended up publishing 15 new blog posts this year. It turns out people still find my blog through Google and other search engines and visit this blog. Here are some of the most visited blog posts this year:
- Stash changes in a git repository with VS Code: This post was published originally in 2023. I made a few minor updates to this post this year, and it is the most popular post on my blog.
- How to install Node.js using NVM on macOS M1: Another 2023 post that was visited multiple times this year.
- My Macbook setup 2024: A new guide I wrote this year when setting up my macbook. This post describes all the requirements I configure when setting up a new machine.
Blog in numbers
The analytics from Fathom show some interesting trends this year. With over 100k page views, the blog has maintained a steady readership.
What’s particularly interesting is how certain technical guides continue to provide value long after publication:
Also, most visitors are coming through search engines:
This year, I also made analytics more transparent by creating “/slash” pages and making the stats public at /stats/. This allows readers to explore the data and aligns with my belief in open metrics.
Highlights from my GitHub
A couple of years back, I started to maintain a single repository for all the demos and example apps I write using React Native and Expo. These example apps are mostly part of the tutorials you see on this blog. This year, it reached 960+ stars. It’s still being actively maintained.
I made a lot of commits
My role at Expo continues to be a major driver of my GitHub activity. The dense contribution graph reflects me working on Expo’s documentation among other things:
A big shout and a huge thanks to folks who sponsored me on GitHub this year!
Traveling
I didn’t travel to my liking and only managed to escape on a couple of occasions.
App.js conf 2024
This year’s App.js conference was a good one. There are so many amazing people sharing expert knowledge to make the lives of React Native and Expo developers better.
I’m extremely thankful that I got the opportunity to visit this year. This was my 4th time visiting the conference. Meeting people you work with in person was the highlight of the conference for me this year.
Everything from the venue, the beautiful city of Krakow, and quality talks was a great experience. Kudos to the organizers for hosting it!
Reading
I successfully completed my yearly Goodreads reading challenge, diving into books across different domains. Here are my picks that I enjoyed reading too much:
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Docs for Developers: I finally read this one from cover to cover after starting it twice in 2022 and 2023. It is still my recommended book for an engineer who works with technical documentation or tech writers who are docs engineers within their organization. This book is full of insights and practical examples on how to tackle and make decisions around everyday docs stuff. Documentation isn’t just about writing—it’s about understanding your audience’s journey. The book’s framework for planning documentation structure based on user experience is one key takeaway.
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Apprenticeship Patterns: This is one of those that I feel I should have read when I was starting my career. The concept of “breakable toys” — creating safe environments to experiment and fail — has changed how I approach learning new technologies, but I learned this the hard way. This book offers the “what” and “why” of the concept and tips to adopt it at the beginning of your career.
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The Creative Act by Rick Rubin: I did enjoy reading this one, but much less than I anticipated. Some of the chapters I found were quite repeatable, considering it’s a thick one.
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Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing: I loved reading the first half of this book. It is definitely an adventure that dives into the human psyche from the perspective of how a group faces adversity together. Remarkably written.
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Technical Writing for Software Developers by Chris Chinchilla: A great insight into the world of different types of documentation with an exploration of the current state of the tech writing industry. I wish more tech writers/doc engineers wrote more books/blogs. The “docs-as-code” approach isn’t just a trend—it’s revolutionizing how we maintain and scale documentation. The book’s insights on treating docs with the same rigor as code has given me confidence about the things I am doing right in my day job.
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Tao of Seneca vol. 3: Completed the trilogy of Tao of Seneca. Tim Ferriss edits the whole series, and all the letters are categorized based on themes. The translation for this set of Seneca’s letters is better than the others I have read. It is also available in the public domain (thanks to Tim Ferriss!).
Wrapping up
That’s a wrap! Even though this year was full of anxiety, I think the last two months have been much better in terms of me achieving the restricted state of inner tranquility.
If you made it so far, I appreciate you!
If you are curious about the previous year-in-review posts or how long I have been writing these posts, check out the links below:
- 2023 - A year in review
- 2022 - A year in review
- 2021 - A year in review
- Year rewind: 2020 (yes, this one is titled differently, and I don’t remember anymore as to why)
Onwards to 2025.
