Your Year in Git Commits. Reflective Prompts to Chronicle Your Coding Story

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

As other people think about finishing the year in style with friends or a lavish party, The Secret Developer is in reflective mode.

“At this time of year, it is a good opportunity to look back and think about our professional life. I want to look back upon this year as if it were a series of Git commits. That’s not like our ‘senior’ developer at work just force-pushing your changes and losing the learnings. It’s about tracking our progress and changes so we can improve year on year.”

Initial Commit: Where Did Your Coding Journey Begin This Year?

“At the beginning of this year, I wanted to change job. I thought I could put my energy into looking for a new position that is better than the current one, preferably with a 20% salary hike. Hmm. This one didn’t go well for The Secret Developer.”

Reflective Prompt: Write a summary of your ‘initial commit’ for 2023. What did your coding life look like at the beginning of the year? Did you achieve it?

Feature Branch: What New Skills or Projects Did You Explore?

“I have explored some new technologies during the year. I’ve looked at some new architectures and thought about how I can expand my The Secret Developer blog. For me, it’s about becoming a more reflective and considered developer overall and thinking about what I can do to make my development environment better. That is, I got a new monitor. Isn’t that enough?”

Reflective Prompt: List the feature branches you checked out this year. What new skills or projects did you start? How did they contribute to your growth as a developer?

Commit Messages: Documenting Your Key Achievements

“Git commit messages are a first pass at documenting your work. They indicate milestones and can even show moments of learning within your work.

I’ve passed through a few achievements this year, but most of them are about refactoring the trash codebase that I’ve needed to work on this year. Doesn’t feel that good, overall.”

Reflective Prompt: Write down your key commit messages from this year. What are the major achievements or changes you made in your coding practice?

Merge Conflicts: Challenges and overcoming them

“I use opendiff to resolve conflicts. At work, I’ve been quite avoidant in attempting to resolve issues with my manager and have been hoping that I would leave this position before things got too bad. I’m still holding on through layoffs, and I’m not sure how long I can continue to pursue this strategy.”

Reflective Prompt: Identify the merge conflicts you encountered and how you resolved them. What were the lessons learned from these challenges?

Pull Requests: Collaborations and Feedback

“I have to say people around me have annoyed me this year. From not reviewing my colleagues' work to idolizing a jerk, I’ve not been in full collaboration mode this year. As documented above, though I don’t want to even improve my behavior in this area. I just want to leave my current job.”

Reflective Prompt: Discuss the significant pull requests in your life. How did collaboration and feedback play a role in your coding journey this year?

Stashing: Ideas and Projects Put on Hold

“There isn’t anything wrong with putting ideas on hold. I guess I’ve put my dreams of leaving my current job in a stash. As well as refactoring the codebase due to disinterest in reviewing code. I guess I’m learning to let it all go piece by piece.”

Reflective Prompt: Share the ideas or projects you stashed this year. Why were they put on hold, and do you plan to revisit them?

Version Control: Personal and Professional Growth

“Version control is about levelling yourself up to a new version. The Secret Developer is working on getting fitter, getting stronger and studying for those FAANG interviews in the new year. It’s about making progress step by step, and I hope that this is something you can approach too.”

Reflective Prompt: Reflect on your personal and professional growth. How have you version controlled your development as a coder and individual?

Final Commit of the Year: Ending on a High Note

“As the year comes to a close, it’s time for the final commit. To end on a high and make sure that our public API is as cool as it can be we can draw attention to things we have done well. I’ve delivered MANY features, and the business is really happy with me. That’s something, right?

Although I think the tech team secretly hates me. You can’t win everything though.”

Reflective Prompt: Describe your final commit for 2023. What are the accomplishments or states of mind you’re ending the year with?

Tagging the Release: Looking Ahead

“Tagging marks significant versions and is useful if people use your software in their releases. You can plan these releases ahead of time and make plans around them. I guess my big release is going to be getting out of my current job. The problem is that I’m waiting for a bonus in Q1 before I start looking in earnest. Is $5k worth that much to me? Unfortunately, it probably is…”

Reflective Prompt: Set your tags for the upcoming year. What are your goals, aspirations, or plans for 2024?

Conclusion

This reflective exercise is more than just a metaphorical alignment with our coding practices and the majesty of git. 

“We should always acknowledge our journey and growth. Here’s to our year. A story of challenges and continuous learning.

Let’s give a single -m. ‘let’s make 2024 more productive and fulfilling than ever before.’”