My 2024 In Programming
Dreamscape Issue 7
Hello, Internet!
I’ve written yearly summaries of what I’ve been doing programming-wise for the past two years.
With this year coming to an end, It’s time to continue with a 2024 wrap up.
Enjoy!
Finishing my degree
My year started in Berlin where I was dual-wielding semesters, one at TU Berlin and one at NTNU. This happened as the semesters in Germany and Norway has a 2-3 month overlap.
I had seven uni courses simultaneously during the overlapping periods. Luckily I could do the courses I had in Norway remotely, but it was definitely too much!
Looking back on this makes me think of what I wrote in my “My 2022 in Programming” post:
A key takeaway from this year is that working on multiple projects at once is very challenging, especially when switching between languages and technologies.
History repeats itself!
Compiler Design
In this course we had bi-weekly exercises in which we gradually built a compiler from scratch in C. The exam was difficult, but over-all I’m happy with the course!
As a supplement to the curriculum I read Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom. The book takes you through the entire process of writing a compiler for the Lox language in Java.
Cloud Computing
This course also had a bi-weekly exercise set, which were to be done in groups. The exercises all revolved around writing IaC for Google Cloud Platform.
The exam was very theoretical, requiring a lot of studying beforehand.
Programming Architectures
Back at NTNU, I took two programming courses, one of which being Programming Architectures.
In this course we programmed a multiplayer chess game using Kotlin, LibGDX and Firebase. It was fun!
Bachelor Project
I was in a great group and wrote a paper on a project we did for NTNU SmallSat Lab. Our project was to create a Satellite Telemetry Alerting System for their HYPSO-1 satellite.
This is a fancy way of saying we created a Slackbot.
It is still being used today which is super cool!
Oslonøkkelen
Back at Oslonøkkelen I’ve been catching up with the Android app. I’ve gotten to write a lot of SwiftUI code which I’ve been enjoying.
We’ve also started experimenting with codesharing between our Android and iOS applications using Kotlin Multiplatform. I got to go to KotlinConf in Copenhagen this year as well!
isak.me
I think I’ve rewritten this website three times this year :P
I’ve now landed on a heavily modified Protocol TailwindUI theme, built using Next, styled using Tailwind and hosten on Vercel. I write each post using Markdown, and have the option to use MDX as well. I’ve added support for RSS.
In total I wrote 13 things on this website this year. I also started a newsletter, in which you might be reading this. Almost 100 people have signed up for it!
I also built two other websites this year, one at portfolio.isak.me and one at garden.isak.me. They are very much abandoned at this point, but might get some more love (or deletion) in 2025.
YouTube Projects
I’ve posted a lot of videos to my YouTube channel this year, some being related to programming projects:
I also did two challenges from Codecrafters. The first one was the Build your own Shell challenge, which I did in Rust. The second was the Build a HTTP Server from Scratch, which I did in C. Both were fun!
Closing Thoughts
I’m excited to to have finished my bachelors degree in computer science and being back at work. I find myself learning more in a work environment, where you work on the same project for a longer period of time.
For 2025, I plan on diving deeper into the world of SwiftUI and iOS development, while posting an occasional YouTube video about whatever I find interesting. I’ll also continue writing on this website.
Happy New Year!🪩