As 2024 draws to a close, I'm taking a moment to reflect on what has been an incredibly educational and rewarding year. Between writing, speaking, and coding (with Java of course :) ), I've had the opportunity to both learn from and share with the wonderful Java community.
Community Engagement
This year gave me many opportunities to connect with fellow developers. I was fortunate to speak at several conferences, including JPrime, JNation, and Devoxx BE, where I learned as much from the attendees and other speakers as I hope they learned from me. The questions and discussions after each talk and during hallway tracks have been invaluable and an amazing experience. I also got the chance to give more workshops at conferences, which is even more fun than speaking! :)
Learning Through Writing
One of the most challenging and rewarding experiences this year was co-authoring “Virtual Threads, Structured Concurrency, and Scoped Values” with Ron Veen. Writing about these concepts forced me to really understand them deeply, and I'm grateful for all the feedback and discussions this has generated. I also had the chance to be a technical reviewer for “Java Coding Problems” which taught me a lot about different approaches to common programming challenges while working with Java.
Sharing Through Blog Posts
Writing technical articles has been my way of documenting what I learned along the way. Each post represents something I've struggled with or found interesting, and I hope they've been helpful to others facing similar challenges.
Growing Together
What makes all of this worthwhile is being part of the larger Java community. Every conversation at a conference, every comment on a blog post (on Reddit or Twitter), and every question after a talk and during workshops has helped me grow as a developer. I'm particularly grateful for all the feedback I've received both positive and constructive as it helps improve the quality of what I share. In the end I really love doing this and want to get really good at it! :)
Looking Forward
As we head into 2025, I'm going to continue this journey with a baby on my side who will fall sleep while listing to me talking about Java. As there's always something new to discover, discuss, or figure out. I look forward to next year were I will dive deeper into Linux, Java, the cloud, and all the other awesome things. All while contributing to the dev community.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey - whether you've attended a talk, workshop, read a blog post, or shared your own experiences!
