My New Year’s Programming Resolution #2021

Adham El Banhawy
3 min readDec 31, 2020

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Finally, this year is over. It was a shitty year. Even though people all around the world seemed more divided than ever, almost everyone can agree that it has been a shitty year.

Which is why I was looking forward to the year’s ending because it meant a new beginning, and that meant a New Year’s Programming Resolution! 🥳

2020 Reflections:

It has been a tough year for me from a programming standpoint. Back in October 2019 I was conscripted into my country’s armed forces, and I was on active duty until December 1st of this year. Access to technology on base was either limited, forbidden, or just not possible. And I was rarely home for vacations.

Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash

However, with some luck and a whole lot of determination I managed to get access to a computer (a very old and low specs one). I wasn’t able to write a lot of code, and when I did I wrote small nodejs scripts, and built a webapp or 2 with Vuejs (which is how I learned to use Vuejs). Otherwise, when I had the time (rarely) I would read ebooks about programming languages and concepts. I think I did a pretty good job at staying sharp and not forgetting what I learned over the years.

Coming back to civilian life also meant looking for a new job and growing my career. I left my previous company as a JS developer to seek a more challenging opportunity at an enterprise level. Even though I was happy at my old job, I knew it was the right move to grow as a software engineer.

I didn’t have a lot of programming goals for 2020 because I knew beforehand I wouldn’t be free for most of it. Yet I can say I achieved the following goals:

  • Learned a new JS framework (Vuejs)
  • Finished an online course (Udacity’s Fullstack Web Development degree)
  • Published a webapp using CI/CD on Azure
  • Integrate docker/containers into my development workflow
  • Read more software engineering books

New Year’s Resolution for 2021:

Looking to the future, it’s time to think about tangible and ambitious goals for the new year. Here is my list for 2021.

  • Earn at least one AWS cloud certificate
  • Earn at least one Azure cloud certificate
  • Become proficient using kubernetes
  • Do more side projects & update my portfolio

Following the KISS principle, I am keeping it simple for 2021. I have a lot to learn, a lot to try out, and a lot to achieve. All I have to do is keep learning, and not overwhelm myself with too much info at once.

Speaking of which, I should and will walk my dogs more often… 🐶

Happy New Year! 🎉🎉🎊🎊🥳🥳🥳

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Adham El Banhawy

Software Developer, blogger, and tech enthusiast. Previously @ IBM. Currently Cloud consulting.