Trying to set goals for 2025

This is my first time really trying to set goals for myself. I am not really one who likes to set yearly goals because so much can change over the year and unpredictably dismiss the chance at success on year-long goals. Last year i changed jobs twice, and each job had different expecataions and environment which would have would have made it hard to set goals for the year.

However, for this year, I am going to try my goals here with you hopefully to keep me in check and to keep me honest. At the end of the year, I plan to revisit these goals and see how I've aligned to them.

I am keeping these goals directed towards my learning and career growth.

New Technologies

Not actually saying the technology has to be cutting edge or brand new, but I want to dive into something uncomfortable while still providing value to my every day.

Learn effect.ts

Effect to me is described as a library that introduces a way to functionally program and manage side effects (from my beginner knowledge here). With this, I see a bunch of potential to dive into this mental model and see how it can be slotted into backend, frontend, cli, etc. I would love to be able to write a service to use at home, or explore how Effect could be used in a framework like Next.js. (maybe future post?)

A new language

Admittedly, most of my career has been in JS/TS development, but have spent time in other languages like Ruby and Python. Although not an expert, I can still write the basic scripts to do some home automation or to organize my photo collections!

I would like to start a new language entirely. I've considered Go for a long time but I don't currently have an applicable use for it. I would like to finally dive into go, and try to get myself ready for this years Advent of Code where i could attempt to use it for the entire time! Lucky I work with some of the most amazing Go devs at Vercel where I can get more collaborated mentorship.

New Discoveries

AI, embrace it

AI is everywhere, and it is not going anywhere. I want to learn how to embrace it in my life for productivity. I am a terrible prompter and definitely lack on the creative side considering some of the amazing generative things I have seen online. I would like to dive deeper into v0.dev to really showcase how easy it is to create interactive applications through conversation. I would also like to utilize AI in my development workflow to help me be more productive in my own applications.

Vim, but lazier

I ended 2024 installing neovim and getting back into vim. When I originally started doing development back in 2014, my mentor at the time was all in on vim. I learned the motions, how to quit (woohoo!), and how to setup my own configuration. However, I gave up quickly when Sublime Text came around, and eventually VSCode. Early last year I started using te Zed editor, and eventually enabled the vim-mode on it (10/10 recommend!). After that, I felt like it was time to push myself back into the terminal. I want to learn more motions, make my workflow more efficient, and get a nice terminal setup for 2025 with Ghostty, tmux and neovim. Wish me luck!

New Opportunities

Finally, I love engagement and collaboration. I enjoy being able to mentor and teach, and I love learning from others. I DO however deal with the imposter syndrome. I love what I do, and things like "tech twitter" really make it hard to want to share my thoughts publically like this. I want to challenge myself to try to find things to share. The things I break, the things I fix, and the things I learn. I am hoping that in 2025, I choose to share more of my thoughts and experiences here, but we will see! 🫣