2024 in review
It’s the last day of the year, just in time to write my now-customary year in review article. Does anyone actually read these, or am I just writing them for myself? It doesn’t really matter either way, as I mainly do write them for myself. I do enjoy looking back at previous years and see what has changed and what has stayed the same.
Previous entries:
2012 - 2016 - 2021 - 2022 - 2023
Freelance work
I’m still working with Sound Radix, an Emmy-award winning software studio that makes plugins for sound engineers and editors. In 2023 I took over development of their frontend and backend, and it’s still going strong. This year I finished the move away from Oscar and Oscar-API to a fully custom-built shop backend with sales reports exactly tailored to what the client needs. We added a gift card system to the site, added an affiliate system, added a way for users to confirm their email address, a way for site admins to refund orders, we migrated to uv, migrated to Svelte 5, and we moved from Google Analytics to Plausible.
I also got rid of a whole bunch of third party dependencies, like dj-rest-auth, pytest, django-environ, svelte-query and many more, which definitely deserves its own article.
We also had to deal with multiple hacking attempts where bad actors tried hundreds of thousands of usernames and passwords to login, which resulted us throttling the login endpoint and hardening the server. All in all a busy year where I also got to do more ops-related work, which was a nice chance of pace.
Writing for loopwerk.io
Including this one, I wrote 20 articles this year, which is a massive increase from previous years: 4 in 2023, 4 in 2022, 24 in 2021, 11 in 2020, 2 in 2019… you get the point. Only in 2021 did I write more, fueled by a bunch of open source work and the corona virus pandemic.
The four most-read articles of all time on my site were all written in the last three months: it’s the four uv-related articles that really racked up the views.
Some stats for loopwerk.io:
17.4k unique visitors (up 208%)
18.6k total visits (up 208%)
25.3k total pageviews (up 226%)
It really was the best year ever for my site.
That peak at the end of the graph is from when one of the uv articles made it onto Hacker News.
Critical Notes
Just like last year, Critical Notes didn’t get a ton of attention in 2024. The biggest reason is stil the same: because the tech stack (SvelteKit and Django) is exactly the same as my day job, working on Critical Notes feels way too much like work. And it just doesn’t pay enough compared to real work, so when it’s not so much fun anymore it’s easy to loose motivation to keep working on it.
I did manage to ship five updates this year and implemented three user-requested features, so it’s not like I’ve abandoned the project.
A few stats from 2023:
- I made €2302 from 71 subscribers
- Over 4000 users
- 28k unique visitors and 393k total page views
And the same stats for 2024:
- I made €3076 from 84 subscribers
- Almost 5500 users
- 38k unique visitors and 396k total page views
While the number of unique visitors increased by 31%, the total page views stayed almost exactly the same. That’s not a great sign. I’m really happy that the number of paid subscribers is still increasing but it’s not increasing nearly as fast as I’d like. Another reason why motivation to put in a ton of hours of my free time is on the low side.
Django
I started using Django in 2009, and it was my main focus until 2012 when I started to write iOS apps and Django became a thing I sometimes touched when an app needed an API, but really it only accounted for maybe 5% of my work time. Then in 2021 I picked up Django again for Critical Notes, when I rewrote my Firestore-based backend to Django REST Framework. And then of course in 2023 it became 50% of my professional focus again when I started working with Sound Radix. All that is to say that since 2021 my Django usage has only increased over time, and this year I wanted to become more active within the Django community.
I applied to become a Django Software Foundation Member, and got approved. I ran for the board of the DSF with a hastily written blurb about what I wanted to accomplish, and didn’t make the cut. I did get to vote in two elections, I became a bit more active on the forum and on Discord, and I offered my help to the Code of Conduct working group.
I love Django, but mainly as a developer simply using Django. When it comes to reporting bugs or suggesting changes or new features the story is quite different. Django is very resistant to change, it’s very hard to get any kind of consensus, tickets get closed with a very unwelcoming “wontfix” status… basically Django’s workflow and triage process is rather harmful for new contributors. I really hope that the new steering council can make some meaningful changes here.
Mentorship program
I’m happy to say that the mentorship program didn’t die, but instead switched focus from iOS to web development, and specifically SvelteKit and Django. This year I have mentored two people; a girl from Italy and a guy from Ghana. I think that for me having two mentees in a year is the perfect amount where it doesn’t overwhelm me or take up too much time. I’m just glad to be able to help some people again, after I didn’t mentor anyone in 2023.
Personal stuff
I went to Istanbul, Winterberg (Germany), Dublin, Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Barcelona and Terschelling (also the Netherlands). It was a good year for travel! I also saw Rammstein and Die Antwoord in concert, and a stand-up show from Trevor Noah, so culturally it was also a good year.
More importantly, in the summer I joined a weekly exercise program via my doctor. A group of overweight people come together every week and with a professional trainer work out for an hour. I’d never go to a gym by myself, but this was really nice actually. This program ran for six months, and then I joined a local badminton club. I’m starting to loose weight and feeling better.
I also got my first pair of glasses this year. I was starting to have trouble reading small text and at some point I finally had my eyes tested and yeah.. I am getting old and my eyesight isn’t getting any better.
Games of the year
My top five games released this year:
- Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
- Balatro
- Path of Exile 2
- Shogun Showdown
- The Bazaar
But when I look at play time and include games released in previous years, I also have to mention Lies of P (my game of the year, although it was released in 2023), Brotato (which I still play almost daily before going to sleep), Death Stranding, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader and Stardew Valley.
2025 resolutions
I’m not making any resolutions this time. I think things are moving in the right direction, and we’ll see what happens in 2025. Happy New Year everyone!