2022 Wrap Up
Another year draws to a close, so I'd like to take a brief moment to reflect on what I've been up to in this space (and elsewhere) in 2022.
Blog Posts and Series
Last year my goal starting in June was to do at least one blog post a week. While it was fun and challenging and I grew a lot, toward the end of the year I found that not only was that pace just too aggressive, but I also burned through a lot of my backlog of blog post topics 🤣. Starting the year out I realized that the topics I had left for myself to write about were much more involved and would take a lot more research and time to really engage with meaningfully. So to facilitate that and not completely wipe myself out on tech blogging, I made it my goal to do one blog post a month. I succeeded in this goal!
I wasn't able to tackle as many larger series as I have in previous years, but I am really proud of the work I put out.
There were a number of posts that got into plain, old fashioned JavaScript fundamentals:
- Strict Mode
- var, let, and const
- Function Declaration vs. Function Expression
- What is an IIFE?
- Scope
- Closures
Even though there are hundreds and hundreds of posts covering these topics scattered throughout the internet, it's always great for me to dive into them and try to illustrate the concepts and build examples on my own. It definitely forced me to face parts of the language that I often take for granted in my everyday programming and dive in deep on basics that I thought I had more familiarity with.
I also did a couple one-off frontend posts:
I honestly didn't think too much about these posts going in. I think I found the prompt for Frontend JavaScript Pop Quiz on Twitter, and people are endlessly debating over whether you're a true frontend dev unless you know all of the different ways to center stuff in CSS. So I put them on my backlog forever ago and just kind of procrastinated on them in favor of what I found to be more interesting writing topics. Little did I know how much I would be coming back to them!
Centering Things in CSS is my first CSS-focused post. It's a little hard to believe I'm going into my sixth year posting to this blog and haven't touched CSS at all. It presented a novel challenge. Where JavaScript is easy enough to put code snippets and their results directly onto the page, CSS is tough because I not only wanted the HTML and CSS code to be on the page for examination, I also wanted the visual result of that HTML and CSS to display. I'm sure other blogging platforms can accommodate this quite easily, but since this is a markdown-based blog, I was left scratching my head. I tried a bunch of different things, including migrating the blog over to MDX (and back), but ultimately I figured out I could easily include Codepen embeds for the examples. It may not the best way to address this problem of pairing HTML and CSS code with examples, but this also served as an excuse to get more proficient (and organized) with Codepen.
Beyond just executing this post, it's one I refer to again and again in my daily professional dev work. I still don't have all of the centering methods actually memorized (though I'm more familiar with them now), so when I am stumped on a particular layout when I'm developing, this post is an invaluable reference for me. That alone makes it worthwhile.
Frontend JavaScript Pop Quiz is also a gift that keeps on giving. At first I thought I'd post this one and then walk away from it, but as I covered some of the aforementioned JS basics I wound up linking back to the problem in the post. The problem is a scoping one and there are a handful of ways to address it, each with their quirks and tradeoffs. While a solution is provided in the post itself, I realized that as I wrote about var, let, and const variables, or IIFEs, or Scope and Closures that something about each of those topics touched on a way to address the problem in that little Frontend JavaScript Pop Quiz.
The main, big series that I took on this year focused on types and coercion, the act of converting values from one type to another. In Types in JavaScript, I dug into each of the available types in the language. Coercion: ToString, ToNumber, and ToBoolean sets the foundation for type coercion by exploring the underlying mechanisms that make coercion possible. And Explicit Coercion, Implicit Coercion, and == and === build on that foundation to display how type coercion is actually performed or encountered in real world programming.
Finally, I took the opportunity to update my actual work portfolio to highlight some frontend dev work I did building out the beautiful 2022 Sprout Social Index microsite landing page, which leads me to my next point.
Professional Development
I've mentioned it before on this site but I started a new position back in February as a Senior Web Engineer on Sprout Social's Brand Creative team. While it was bittersweet to leave my team at Austin PBS, the Marketing Dev team at Sprout has really given me a lot of room for growth, collaboration, and leadership in a natural and supportive way.
I've also had the chance to build some gorgeous and fun pages, from the 2022 Index to this Employee Advocacy ROI Calculator and lots of feature, integration, and product pages. I've also grown tremendously in my craft, from paying down technical debt, overhauling/simplifying the entire website's type scale system, and maintaining relationships with our great team of designers, copy editors, content managers, videographers, motion designers, and other stakeholders. It's a wonderful, creative, and collaborative environment with so much room for ownership and development.
Travel
I also did the most travel I've ever done in my life to this point in 2022. In February while I was in between jobs, I spent a week out in the Davis Mountains in Far West Texas. I stayed in the Indian Lodge, swam in Balmorhea, composed and produced an album, and went hiking.
In May and June we went to Chicago to see the city in the summertime, eat churros, and watch after a sweet kitty named Kasha.
In July I went back to Chicago again for Sprout Social's Midyear Meetup.
In August we went to Colorado to support my brother as he did the Leadville 100 MTB race, which was absolutely outrageous and kind of terrifying.
In September we went to Utrecht and Amsterdam in the Netherlands so I could play some experimental cello and eat a bunch of amazing Indonesian food.
In October we went to Dexter, Missouri for a wedding and saw a cotton gin and then spent a day in Memphis. I got to see Beale Street.
In November we went back out to West Texas to stay in the Indian Lodge again, watch the lunar eclipse in the dark sky region, swim in Balmorhea, then stay at Chinati Hot Springs with our wonderful community of friends. I played music for the setting desert sun while the bats were coming out to feed and we soaked in the hot springs and then went by the Gage Hotel in Marathon again.
This photograph is by Benjamin Dobbin.
Then finally I went back to Chicago one more time in December to see my dev team, celebrate Sprout holidays, get snowed on, and catch Sunn O))), the heaviest band on earth.
Looking Forward to 2023
Going into the new year, I plan on continuing with at least one post a month. The topics may start to vary as I have some creative goals I want to execute with code. I'll continue growing my career and playing music, and just overall keeping on with the same good work you've come to expect. As always, I'm thankful to anyone reading this!
Happy coding and happy 2023,
Joey