Dev Retro 2022 - My reflections

In this post, I want to reflect on my journey as a developer over the last year.

I published a new Book!

Last January I released my latest book on writing modular Laravel applications call Laravel: The Modular Way. Read more about it at https://modularlaravel.com/

This was a massive personal achievement, the book itself took me many weeks of writing and re-writing chapters, getting feedback and refreshing how to write a self-published eBook. My previous 2 books were both published via a publisher where you provide the content and they do the rest.

This led to these posts on the subject

• Software/tools for self-publishing books

• Generate PDF and Epub files using Pandoc

I published my book on Gumroad which was a great experience easy to use and buyers could purchase and get access to the content without needing to build anything custom.

I also published it on Amazon I figured it would do well there since they get so much traffic. I opted into their DWP shared book program but after a quarter is returned few results. I've since come out of that and sold it directly on the Amazon website.

I learned that for such a niche book Amazon doesn't feel worth the hoops you have to jump through.

Selling a digital copy via Gumroad was a much better experience but you do need an audience to market the book to.

Changed Job

Late last year after 13 years at The One Point I decided it was time to move on.

That was actually a really hard decision to make, I loved my time at The One Point. I've worked with amazing people and learned a lot. I was managing a team there was nowhere to grow too.

Additionally, the direction of the technology stack was going I didn't want to use. I also was working in an office that is such a waste of travelling time, when I can work just as well if not better remotely.

I started to look around the job market and applied for a bunch of jobs that would be building API's now I can build API's but I don't think it is that interesting to build.

I then saw a job posting that used the TALL stack. I love working with Laravel Livewire and TailwindCSS and fully remote seemed like a perfect fit.

I got the job yay! I'm now working at International Workplace with a brand new team. Loving every moment of it. Like any change, there are new ways of working to get up to speed with and understand how you fit in with the team and what value you can bring.

I was very nervous about changing from a job I'd known for over a decade. I'm enjoying the work as now I get to work with Laravel Filament which is a great PHP framework built on top of Laravel.

I'm happy that I took the plunge, it would have been very easy to stay as I was and keep my head down.

Change is always scary and you never know until you try. Thankfully I left on good terms and still speak to my past colleagues.

Conferences

Last year I never managed to get to an in-person conference instead I attended a few online conferences, I love attending conferences and learning new trends and techniques, but you miss out on the community side a lot with online conferences.

I'm happy that in a few weeks time I'll be attending my first Laracon EU conference. I will finally get to meet some people that I've followed and spoken to for years online.

Conclusion

2022 was a very interesting year for me, with a lot of doubts about the direction I wanted to take, and a couple of big wins.

It's great to push yourself out of your comfort zone and see what happens!