This is not a New Year Resolution

Really, it’s not

This year was my first full year of not going to school and there are number of things worth telling. I would like to share some of my experiences over the year.

Q1: Building a Product that Matters and Balancing Life

Startup hype is strong this year and I joined the hype train.

For the most part of the first quarter, I was learning JavaScript to work on a pretty interesting project at Oozou. To be honest, it’s one of the biggest projects I’ve ever work with so I put lots of effort into learning how to actually write a code that scales. (and I’m still constantly learning). Apart from JavaScript, I also dig a bit deeper into Ruby on Rails in order to build a tool for my own startup.

BASE Facebook Page

What I learned from the first quarter of the year is how to learn new things effectively. The key of learning is not just read and brag about it but all about getting your hand dirty.

“Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face, and then reach for the stars.” — Ben Stein

We actually had a fight right before our flight back to BKK because I was on a call to fix something for my team. I should’ve prioritized things better.

I was putting most of my effort on my startup and almost forgot about my relationship. It was not in a really good shape. There were multiple occasion I pull an all nighter and also had a fight with my girlfriend. I was exhausted both physically and mentally. I need to figure something out or else it’ll continue to drain me but I still have no clue what to do at that time.

Q2: Launching my Product and Meeting One of My Icon

My simulation launched with “Business For Youngsters” course around early April. The week before the launch was a really intense one. I’m the only developer on the team and need to do everything myself from coding, testing and deploying.

Our PR video

Yes, we have a PR video. 😎

I had learned huge amount of DevOps operations and frameworks. Despite all the automation pipeline I built, I realized that I need a team. It turned out that the one-man-army will not suffice anymore. (My health was pretty much broken)

In this quarter, I was pretty lucky to meet one of my icon (and client), Ash Maurya

He’s a really awesome dude. 👍 (thanks again Jan)

We exchanged some ideas and talked about stuffs not related to work. It was a really good experience and I had learned quite a bit from a conversation with him. It was one of the moments I will sure remember from 2017.

Life’s too short to build something nobody wants. — Ash Maurya

Oh and I was better at controlling my anger then. 😬 My relationship has gotten slightly more healthy. Me and my girlfriend also started a regular workout schedule! WE’RE DOING IT BOI!

Q3: Crypto! Crypto! Machine Learning!

TO THE FLIPPIN’ MOON!! 🌕

The third quarter is coming in hot and the project for BASE was quite stable. It was some bug fixes and website update. I had more time to do what I want. (YES!)

I started trading crypto-currency around August and man! it was a great decision. I was into the technical analysis and learn some useful stuff to help making decision. It took a little bit too much effort and focus so I was wondering, what if I don’t have to do this myself?

I had learn and use a bit of machine learning algorithm in the past and want to try it with crypto-trading. I teamed up with some friends and write micro-services to retrieve market data, train ML model and make a request to buy/sell on the exchange. It’s still WIP but I hope we have it running on production early next year.

We call it “Quit the Job” project. 🙃

I also participated in KBTG TechJam and was one of the finalists. It was quite an experience competing and meeting people from different fields (Designers and Data Scientists). Huge thank to my friend Pumjai who taught me R and useful technique in data exploring.

BTW, that is not our prize. 🤣

Q4: Functional Programming, New Ideas and Better Relationship

My friend I'Boss was posting (more like ranting 🙃) about FP and Category Theory for quite a long time and it was this quarter I decided to learn the a new programming paradigm for greater good. I was a super fun exploration. This new knowledge makes my code cleaner, more composable which leads to more maintainable app!

Ruby is a pretty decent language for shifting mindset because I can do both OO and FP at the same time. It’s a gradual process of learning and now I’m ready to go fully functional.

As I learned earlier this year that the best way to learn is to get my hand dirty. I’ve been thinking of a project to put my FP mindset to action, of course with a proper FP language.

I chose “Elixir” because it looks like Ruby but on drug. (Crazy fast)

Elixir School

I’m still trading crypto, calculating indicators and graphs are pretty daunting tasks so I thought “let’s build a service that notify the trend change with FP!!” Thus the new project was born. I’m currently learning Elixir and hopefully finished building this app by January (finger cross)

Back to my relationship, we’re more open to each other and have less argument. I learned to listen and she learned to understand a weird person like me so I guess that’s a good thing. There were still some bad times but I hope we can do better next year.

That’s it

2017 was a great year. Tough but lovable. Full of energy but sometimes hollow. The only concern I’ll bring to 2018 is my mom’s health. She had a lung cancer for almost 5 years now. It has been spreading and it is now in the last stage.

I’m glad we had a family vacation at Krabi before she had a brain tumor because her health has worsen after the tumor removal operation.

Wish her luck. 🙂

The funny thing is this year started off at the hospital and ended at the hospital for me. My GF and my sister was admitted due to food poisoning during our new year trip last year and I’m writing this next to my mom’s bed at the hospital.

I hope you have had a great year.

Cheers to 2018,

Tino