My 2021 Tech Highlights
I started writing a yearly retrospective post about both my personal and work life, but quickly realized that a) it would be a huge post b) separation of concerns 😁
So I decided to publish only the tech part of that overview. At first, I thought I’d do something like “highlight of the month”, but after laying those highlights out, it (obviously) turned out that life isn’t linear, and while some months were totally packed with events, the other ones were… absolutely empty 😅
And, before we take the ride back to 2021, in case you stumbled on this post and have no idea who I am:
whoami
I’m a software developer from a mobile studio based in Latvia called Chili Labs (BTW, we have a new website! It’s really fresh, so it might have some uncaught bugs, so please be kind 😁). Most of the time I work on Flutter projects 💙, but occasionally I’m reminded with tasks that I come from a native Android background, and even less occasionally I do stuff out of my main domain, such as backend development or frontend web development 😅
January & February 2021
These were the most (and the only) diverse months in terms of my tech stack.
At the beginning of 2020 I’ve started working on my first Flutter project in Chili. I’ve worked on it for most of the 2020, and by the end of the year, I got to work not only on the Flutter part of it, but also both on the backend and the web admin panel. I’ll explain 😁
This is our client’s project called TopUp (used to be ExtraPeople). It consists of two apps: client and partner. The idea is that clients can create gigs via app, to which the partners can apply (also via app). We took on the full development: 2 apps, backend, and an internal admin panel for managing everything.
The project consisted out of 2 apps, but the design system of those apps was shared. So the apps ended up having a lot of shared code via modules and as the result, we had 4 apps from one codebase (client android & iOS + partner android & iOS). That’s the power of Flutter 😅
Besides the apps themselves, I ended up doing occasional tasks on the backend and web admin panel. The backend is written in Go, and it was a really fun experience, I loved it. The web admin panel is written on “Ruby on Rails” since it was initially started by a dev with that experience. And, well, I did not love it 😂
Altogether such an experience turned out to be rewarding because I got to know the domain inside & outside. That knowledge really helped during work on different parts of the project, since I knew how it’s implemented on the other side. And I’m really grateful to Chili for such an opportunity because I actually asked for it and I got it!
But the diversity didn’t end here 😂 And I was switched to a native Android project. Now, I didn’t work full time there, I just helped with some features. The project was SoraStream — a cloud-based gaming subscription platform.
I got to implement the search screen and the most fun part of it → fuzzy search, which involved the Levenshtein distance algorithm. I also participated in planning the TV app architecture and that’s where the clean arch layers of our app really shined — we just added a new presentation module for TV, but the data and domain remained untouched. And it worked just like that 🤩 It was fun to deploy the app to the TV in my living room and to actually use it 😁
March 2021
First, we released TopUp! That was an important milestone because the apps were in development for a little over a year, and it was the first Flutter project at Chili that I got to work on, so yeah, yay! 😁
Another big accomplishment this month was CrochetApp web admin panel. Now, we’ll be talking about CrochetApp more during this post 😅
CrochetApp is actually our own in-house project. Well, it’s not exactly Chili’s, but it’s the Chili’s CEO app, who is also the CEO of CrochetApp. The purpose of this app is to provide convenient tools for crocheters, such as yarn repository, row counters, pattern PDF storage, shopping list, etc. And another unique feature is our own format of patterns — detailed step-by-step guides on how to crochet amigurumi toys. I wrote more about it here.
But in March, I didn’t work on the mobile app itself. In March, I created the self-service (for internal use) for creating the mentioned patterns via GUI. I used Flutter web for that (which was in the beta stage at that moment). It was a very creative task because there were no designs, no specifications, nothing. I had all the freedom I wanted, which was a liberation and a curse at the same time 😂
To create a pattern, you need to:
- Fill in the general info, such as title, description, duration, pictures, etc.
- Fill in the materials info, which are lists of yarns and other tidbits such as fiberfill, eyes, etc.
- Fill in the info about the pattern author
- Fill in the list of pattern parts, which have pictures, texts, and tables with step information.
So I created a UI, which allows to input all the information via the platform and upload the steps information via CSV. All of this with a live preview of how the pattern will look in the app and granular edit options. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and more with the fact that the pattern creation is now much simpler than it was before (which was manually…and it was a mess).
And the last important thing to me that month: I was trusted to perform a code audit for an external Flutter app. This was my first code audit, and I was lucky that the codebase had so many problems, that it was easy to find them 😂 I even created an internal list of things to look for in a code audit for future use. Should I publish it, btw? 😛
April 2021
In April, I worked on two Flutter apps, one of them under NDA, and the other one is Bilderlings — a modern banking application. Fintech is something we do a lot in Chili (cause the app under NDA is also a fintech one) 😁 I didn’t start Bilderlings from scratch, it was already an app in production (done by my co-workers at Chili), but I was working on a new scope — adding new features & fixing bugs.
But the most important thing that month was that I got approached by Anna Metelska from Geekle about participating in the Flutter Global Summit (summer edition) as a speaker. At first, I was like, “Me? A speaker? Pfft, what can I speak about? I’ve never spoken about Flutter”. My public speaking experience at that moment included only a couple of workshops for Android beginners (the last being in February 2020 due to COVID-19). But I decided to give it a go anyway and to speak about how we built CrochetApp: it was an interesting use case of a production app built with only Flutter and Firebase. And my talk got accepted 🙂
May, June & July 2021
Now, remember how I said some months are full of events and some are not? Well, we’re at the not part right now 😂
In May, while preparing for my talk at “Flutter Global Summit”, I wrote my first post about Flutter, and that is the same “How we built CrochetApp: Flutter + Firebase”. I actually really enjoyed writing it and got a lot of great feedback about it. That’s when I realized I want to continue blogging about Flutter, but that realization turned into action only many months later 😂 due to various life circumstances 😁
In June, I started working on a new Flutter project at work, on which I actually work most of the time to this day, but which is unfortunately under NDA and I can’t talk about it that much. I do mention some of the work on it in my “Daria’s Flutter diaries” series though :)
And in July the Flutter Global Summit happened! I was scared to death while speaking 😂 And rewatching my talk was quite cringy, of course 😅 But the feeling after is one of the best feelings ever. Public speaking is something I really want to work on in 2022. Despite the pre-talk fear, it’s still an experience I enjoy a lot (masochist much? 😂) and I want to improve those skills to the level that I don’t cringe while rewatching my talks 😂
August & September 2021
These were the months of my wedding, vacation, surgery and nothing interesting happened here 😅
October 2021
This was a crazy month in terms of personal life activities, but also some awesome things happened in my tech life! First, I officially got the senior dev title 😅 Not that it changed anything, and I also think that those titles are very subjective to companies, but I started at Chili as a junior (I already had experience, not an intern) ~4,5 years ago, so it’s kinda a milestone 🙂 But comparing to the REAL seniors that I know, I don’t feel like I’ll ever reach their level of seniority, and I’m really honored to work alongside them and being able to pick their minds whenever I need 😁
The real highlight of the month was participating in #WDA — Women Developer Academy from Google! It was a month-long program for women, who want to be more vocal in their respective technical communities, that included webinars on various topics about community contributions (blogging, vlogging, public speaking, open-source, etc.). Besides those webinars, we also had personal mentors from the GDE program assigned to us for the duration of the program. My mentor was Merab Tato Kutalia, who gave me tons of valuable & practical advice, as well as helped me apply to a conference, to which I got accepted (more on that in November). I also got to meet Anna Leushchenko and Lara Martin during WDA, who shared their experience and advice with me, to which I’m really grateful 💙 And of course, I met a lot of amazing women among the participants and had a great time during our online meetings! So yes, this was THE BEST experience, and I’m extremely happy I was introduced to this opportunity by Alina Karpelceva ❤️ Btw, WDA is back for February 2022, and if this is something that might interest you, you can apply here!
November 2021
This was another crazy month 😁
The most important thing was that we finally released the “Bunny Search” app to both stores, a Flutter pet project of mine! I still haven’t written a post about this app, so I have to explain what it is every time I mention it 😅 “Bunny Search” is an app for searching brands with a cruelty-free status. It is both an aggregator of organizations that certify brands with cruelty-free status, and our own list of brands verified by our team. For now, besides our own data, we only have the PETA brands, but we’re negotiating with other organizations too. And there are many other features coming to “Bunny Search” in the near future too 🐇🔍 Available for free on PlayStore & AppStore 🙂
Then I also got to speak at DevFest Romania with my talk about CrochetApp. I’m yet to see the video from the conference (and probably cringe again 😅). I once again was very nervous before and during the talk, but hopefully, it was better than the first time. And hopefully, the third time will be better than the second one… 🙈
One more important thing is that I returned to Twitter 😁 Well, it’s actually hard to call “return”, since I never really used it much in the first place 😅 I was met by an amazing Flutter community, already made some friends, and fell totally in love with this social network and really happy to be connected to the Flutter world. This truly is a highlight for me, and I decided to do it after participating in WDA… so the dots are connecting!
This was also the time that I was visiting Barcelona, and by a lucky coincidence, I got to participate in an offline Flutter Meetup! It was a new experience for me because it was a) the first offline Flutter event that I’ve participated in & b) the first event that I visited without co-workers, all by myself. I did feel a little awkward at first because my current Spanish level doesn’t let me communicate much beyond the most beginner level 😂 But the event was in English and I also managed to network with a couple of Russian developers, so it went great! I really miss more offline events 😢
December 2021
And we’re back to where we started from 😁
Despite the holidays season, December is quite chill for me this year in terms of work, so I finally found some time to:
- Return to blogging via “Daria’s Flutter diaries”
- Work on my (currently “secret” 😁) project
Logically, this is the time when I think about what awaits me in the Future (pun intended 😁 if you know, you know). I don’t really plan to set any goals because I already have quite a clear vision on what I want to accomplish in the upcoming future and it’s not specifically tied to the new year 😁 Some of the things are:
- Release that “secret” project
- Continue developing Bunny Search
- Learn, learn, learn 🙂
- And also teach a little 😛
- Be an active community member! I have so many posts to write & hopefully opportunities to speak 😅
All in all, 2021 turned out to be a very productive and diverse year for me and I’m really happy with it :) No regrets and only excitement for what’s next. See ya here in December 2022 to discuss how that turned out! 😂
Happy New Year and may all the things that you want & need find their way to you in 2022 😛 And if they don’t, then do it yourself! 😉
P.S. If you have your own 2021 tech highlights posts, please share, I love to read those ☺️
Daria 💙
