Looking back at 2024

Published on December 9, 2024

All I can truly say about this year is that things were bananas.

Here’s a look back at 2024 from me:

Software Development

It’s cliché, but honestly: learn the basics, it will pay off over time
There’s a strange convergence of Java and JavaScript in terms of general usability. This might get interesting over the next while.
In some ways, Node’s user experience is pretty good overall, perhaps on par with Java
Honestly I haven’t used AI-tooling too much to generate code, so take that for what it’s worth
This year I got to dive into Playwright for browser testing and so far, Playwright has been pretty decent. There are some occasional things I miss from the Selenium WebDriver ecosystem, but Playwright is geared towards modern test automation so I do enjoy it
This post on replacing authentication and authorization with login and permissions was a notable one this year. Sometimes solutions to technical problems aren’t always that technical, and really need a bit of a shift in thinking more than anything.

Social media has greatly shifted in the past few years. I still think no one quite knows what to do there.
LLMs and small-language models could have a moment in the coming years. Remember Big Data?
There are so many intelligent folks outside of IT departments that could really be excellent in IT, and vice versa.
Years ago I saw someone refer to Silicon Valley as “Silly Valley”. That person was not wrong.
I used to think crytocurrencies and block-chain were a fad that were destined to die away, and now I’m afraid I was incorrect about that.
Computers can and should be used for fun, non-serious stuff.
I had an interesting conversation with some software developers this year around software quality and automation. One had the opinion that in the age of AI everything, test engineers are going to become more valuable since they will actually understand what’s going on with particular projects. I think I agree but we will need to see how this all plays out.

Raising kids is hard, regardless of your particular life situation.
I never thought going to Subway for a quick lunch would be so enjoyable to do, but here we are.
Something surprising to me is how much I enjoy drawing and painting with kids, particularly young kids.

I’m pretty fortunate to have seen as much of Canada as I have, this country is big and small at the same time.
Toronto is definitely a border town.
There are entire books to be written about the Kendrick/Drake battle from Drake’s perspective.
I recently saw a video in which an American describes moving to Canada and living here for over a year. She pointed out that Canada has its own celebrities and business culture, among other things. I’m really hoping Americans catch onto this.
I’m utterly fascinated with the Arctic and Inuit culture. So close and yet so far away.

Art is truly amazing.
Taylor Swift is fine, get over it.
The election of Trump certainly means there’s going to be a lot of strife over the next few years.
I’ve been thinking about this article on the tyranny of the US penny since I read it. There is a lot going on there.
Really hoping I can up my math game this year.

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