The rocket landed. December 21st, Cape Canaveral: SpaceX launched a Falcon 9, delivered its payload to orbit, and then the first stage came back, tail-first, engines lit, and set itself down on a landing pad like the 1950s sci-fi paperbacks promised. I watched the stream live and cried a little, no I won’t be taking questions. From “full RUD” in January to touchdown in December. Eleven months. Iterate through explosions. Land anyway. Best engineering story of the year and it isn’t close.
Year three retro. World: Windows went free, Google became a letter, a Jeep got hacked, VW’s cheat was code, Swift went open, Pluto has a heart, and Star Wars broke every record ever (opening weekend: complete). Me: led my first project, mentored two people, gave three talks, survived a market crash emotionally intact, and shipped invisible reliability work I’m prouder of than any feature. Proverbs file: 94 entries. Fantasy PL: 2nd place. Agonizingly 2nd. Null Pointer Exception will have its revenge.
Next sprint (2016): my performance review is January 14th and my manager keeps smiling at me in a way that suggests news. Also: learn whatever this “TensorFlow” thing Google just open-sourced is. Also: Leicester City are top of the Premier League as I type. Leicester City. What a time to be alive and on-call.
See you in fifteen, from whatever I am next year.