Twenty-four entries. Didn’t miss one. Time for a proper retro, sprint-style.
What shipped, world edition: two new consoles, Twitter’s IPO, the Hyperloop homework, Touch ID, a $35 dongle that beat a $99 box, and a joke currency with a dog on it. What broke: SimCity, Battlefield, healthcare.gov, the Old Trafford floodlights, Google Reader (murdered, not broken), and Bitcoin (twice, recreationally).
What shipped, me edition: first feature, first outage, first postmortem, first 2:47am page, first time reading a query plan without moving my lips. My Tech Lead Proverbs file has 31 entries. My Fantasy Premier League team finished 4th out of 10, entirely on auto-pick momentum and one goalkeeper having a career year.
What I’d do differently: ask questions sooner. Every time I sat stuck for three hours out of embarrassment, the answer took a senior thirty seconds. The embarrassment was made up. The three hours were real.
Next sprint (2014): learn JavaScript properly, not just jQuery-by-tribes. Watch one WWDC or I/O in person or die trying. Keep writing these.
Happy holidays. On-call is quiet. The graphs are flat and beautiful, like fresh snow.