This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Aditya Kumar
As 2024 comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on a year that has been truly transformative. This year was filled with milestones, new opportunities, and countless lessons that have shaped my journey as a developer and a learner. Here’s a glimpse into what I accomplished, learned, and aspired to achieve in 2024.
A Major Milestone: Ambala College of Engineering
This year began with a significant step in my academic journey—getting into Ambala College of Engineering. It marked the culmination of my high school years and the beginning of a new chapter filled with opportunities to grow as an engineer and innovator.
Diving Into Open Source Contributions
One of my biggest focuses this year was contributing to open source projects. Here are some highlights:
1. Wikimedia
While I wasn’t actively involved in the MediaWiki organization this year, I am planning to be more engaged in 2025 as I deeply admire what Wikimedia does for society—free education for everyone! Along the way, I also learned how to use Gerrit and managed to get 4 PRs closed across multiple VCS platforms, including Gerrit and the Wikisource project on GitHub.
2. Azalea-rs
With six pull requests merged, I made significant contributions to azalea-rs, a Rust library for creating Minecraft Bots, improving its functionality and learning a lot in the process.
3. Rust
This year also marked my first contribution to the Rust programming language. While the PR is still awaiting merging due to holiday delays, it was a milestone in my journey with Rust. The experience taught me about the rigor and community involvement required in contributing to such a widely used language.
The PR has been merged
Bevy-Discord: Bridging Discord with Bevy
I created and open-sourced a Rust crate called bevy-discord, which connects the Discord API with the game engine Bevy. Solving the challenges of integrating these two platforms was a fulfilling experience. While the crate is already functional, I’m planning to add a rich presence feature to make it even more versatile and useful for game developers.
Initiating rs-workspace: A Successor to actions-rs
Inspired by GitHub’s actions-rs project, I initiated rs-workspace, aiming to provide enhanced Rust workflow automation tools. So far, I’ve built one action, rust-toolchain, and I’m excited to expand this project further in the coming months.
Cargo-Wiki: A WIP Rust Documentation Generator
I began working on cargo-wiki, a WIP tool designed to generate Rust documentation in markdown format. My goal is to make the output exceptionally human-readable, avoiding HTML tags wherever possible. This project led to my first Rust contribution when I identified a documentation error in rustdoc-types, but it was a error in librustdoc which my PR attempts to fix. The process of resolving this issue was immensely rewarding and deepened my understanding of Rust’s internals.
Building a Portfolio and Blog
I created my personal portfolio and blog using Astro, employing some unconventional methods to keep the project scalable and organized:
Git Submodules for Content Management: Instead of storing blog content directly in the repo, I used a separate content repository linked as a git submodule. Symbolic links for directories made the setup seamless, ensuring my website repo remains fork-friendly.
Commit0a1bd1to76ab37Hosting Journey: Initially, I hosted the website on Netlify, leveraging their dynamic functions for up-to-date GitHub repo cards. Later, I migrated to Cloudflare Pages for better infrastructure, and finally settled on GitHub Pages. By automating builds and submodule updates with GitHub Actions, I created an efficient, maintenance-free deployment process.
GitHub Pages Migration Commit, Cloudflare Pages Migration PR #1, Original Netlify Commit
Challenges, Lessons, and the Road Ahead
This year wasn’t without its challenges. Balancing multiple projects, managing time, and diving into new technologies pushed me out of my comfort zone. However, these challenges also provided invaluable lessons and skills that I’ll carry forward into the new year.
As I look to 2025, I’m excited to continue working on my existing projects, contributing to open source, and exploring new opportunities for growth. Here’s to another year of innovation and learning!
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Aditya Kumar