A Year of Heavy Lifting and Learning: A Simple Recap
This year felt like lifting the heaviest weight, only to realize I hadn’t moved forward much. That’s the best way I can describe a year full of learning and switching context. Even though progress felt slow, I learned a lot along the way. Here are few highlights
Golang
Golang has been a central theme for me in last couple of years, I spent countless hours working with Cobra and Viper to create robust CLI tools. These libraries made structuring and configuring applications simpler and more efficient. The highlight of my Golang journey this year was contributing to an viper project that gave me immense satisfaction
Working with Go has taught me the value of simplicity and performance, and it continues to be my go-to language
Starting with Backstage
The year began with a focus on the developer platform tool, Backstage. Every day brought new challenges and ideas about solving platform-related problems. Backstage works like LEGO blocks—you use its pieces to build tools that help build even bigger tools.
It’s simple for the end-user but tricky for the team developing and maintaining it. Setting up Backstage requires a lot of effort and learning, but it has a strong community to help. While it’s powerful, it takes time and dedication to use it well. Also i see lot of SAAS companies comming up in these space offering easy use and onboarding.
Spending Time with Terraform
A big part of my year was spent working with ]Terraform](https://www.terraform.io/), moving manual configurations into code. Terraform is great for managing infrastructure as code. It makes things more organized and easier for others on the team to understand and use.
Since I was spending so much time with Terraform this year, I ended up exploring writing providers. I created one for PingAccess and wrote an article about the basic structure of a Terraform provider. It was a great way to dive deeper into how Terraform works and expand my knowledge.
Through this work, I also learned about caching content, managing edge servers, working with Akamai, setting up DNS, and handling artifact and Docker repositories. These topics were challenging but rewarding to understand.
Exploring Kubernetes with Rancher
I also spent time working with Rancher Kubernetes this year. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to move my home lab setup to Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE). Rancher makes managing Kubernetes clusters easier and more enjoyable, whether for work or personal projects.
AI Prompting Experiences
This year also involved a lot of experimenting with AI prompting. My experience with tools like ChatGPT and similar platforms was generally positive. They saved time when it came to finding errors or solutions to problems. However, I noticed that my learning process took longer when I relied on these tools for new topics. Without them, I might have picked up new things faster. Even so, AI tools proved incredibly helpful in reducing the time needed to solve specific issues.
Half-Baked Projects
As usual, I also had a half-baked projects that didn’t kick off as planned. One such project was an auth server. I’ve always wanted to write an auth server, and since I’m comfortable with Go and have worked with many identity providers over the years, I thought it would be a great experience to create one for my home lab. While I have a base plan for this project, it didn’t progress much this year. Hopefully, I can pick it up in 2025.
Self-Hosting Discoveries
On my self-hosted homelab side, my Raspberry Pi is still going strong along with two HP EliteDesk machines. This year brought many great discoveries. Among all the tools I explored, three stood out: Coolify, PocketBase, and Authentik. These tools impressed me, and I plan to keep using them going forward.
I also recently started learning Svelte. Although I haven’t had the chance to apply what I’ve learned yet, I’m planning to use it along with PocketBase for a project in 2025.
2025 Plans
Next, 2025. Planning to stick to the stack I know and focus more on building things and contrubuting to opensource.
Looking Back
I know I’ve built a strong base for the future. Each tool and skill I’ve learned has prepared me for new challenges.
cheers to another year of learning and moving forward!, Happy New Year.
Credits
Re-written by ChatGPT :)