It's been four years since I initially started this blog. I had no expectations or goals for what this blog would be. But now as I read some of my earlier posts, I find it very humbling to see how I've grown as a developer, and as a person. I want to highlight a few old posts that jumped out at me when I read them.
In the earliest days of this blog, I think I was more interested in writing a blogging system than actually blogging. The original code that generated this site were a kludgey set of Perl scripts that stitched together markdown content into HTML. It's fun to read my rationale behind building a blog engine, but in reality, it was a mistake to build something from scratch rather than to extend an existing system. Now I'm stuck with it, but at least the latest version is a lot tidier and more maintainable than my earlier attempts.
I laughed at how stupid most of my earlier posts sound, but this post on premature testing stood out as one of the few posts that still feel relevant today. In the same vein of overtesting, I also really enjoyed DHH's post Testing like the TSA.
I've enjoyed and learned a lot at each place I've worked at. I still keep in touch with ex-coworkers, and have met some of my closest friends through work. While I don't have blog posts going all the way back, it was fun to read posts for when I started at a new workplace.
While my technical skills have improved since those early posts, I still have much to learn. I'm happy that I'm just as excited to design and program today as I was when I first started. If anything, the past projects and problems I've tackled have opened up a whole new realm of challenges for me to take on. I'm excited to see where I'll go next - both as a developer, and as an individual.