2021 Year - end Summary
I started writing year - end summaries last year, and this year, I’m doing the same as usual.
Work and Technical Learning
Let’s start with work - related matters.
Since my work involves a lot of interaction with AWS, the leader asked us to take an AWS certification exam, and the cost could be reimbursed. I reviewed for over two months, but in the end, due to the busyness of home decoration, I didn’t have the time to take the exam. Now, I probably don’t remember much of the content… This is probably the most regrettable thing this year.
This year is probably the year when I wrote the most code in my more than four - year work experience.
I contributed approximately 350 commits and 40,000 lines of code this year, all typed line by line, excluding third - party libraries. Among them, about 20,000 lines are related to Django, 10,000 lines are for Vue, and another 10,000 lines are related to AWS and various DevOps tools, such as Lambda, Prometheus, etc.
I made a little progress in coding this year.
First, I mastered the basic development functions of Vue, which can be considered an entry - level achievement. Second, I gained a relatively in - depth understanding of Django Rest Framework and used it extensively in development. I also wrote a simple series of notes. Third, I had a deeper understanding of Python high - concurrency and Django asynchrony. I encountered many problems in this regard in projects over the past year.
Learning outside of work.
This year, my learning outside of work mainly focused on machine learning (deep learning) and PyTorch.
On the one hand, I’m really interested in this area, especially in computer vision (CV), time - series analysis, and prediction. Then, in the project, we started to try to use machine learning to seek better results. However, no one in our team was familiar with machine learning, so we finally found a data scientist (I think it’s similar to an algorithm engineer in China) from a team in the US to help. But the effect wasn’t very good, and that’s when I had the idea of learning it myself.
At first, I studied AWS SageMaker for a while. AWS has encapsulated machine - learning models for some common scenarios and provided very complete documentation. Even people who know nothing about machine learning can follow the documentation step by step to run the model and get results. But I found some problems. First, I didn’t know how to optimize the model. Because I didn’t understand the basic concepts of machine learning and the principles of the models, I had no idea what those parameters and hyper - parameters represented, and thus didn’t know where to start with optimization. Second, I didn’t know how to interpret the obtained results, that is, the so - called interpretability. Third, the requirements were severely restricted. In order to make SageMaker as simple as possible, the models in it have very strict restrictions on the applicable scenarios. It was difficult for us to directly apply them, but we didn’t have the ability to modify them either.
After studying SageMaker, I still felt that I needed to know the specific implementation of algorithms and common “routines” to apply them in practical work. Coincidentally, later I came across DataWhale (an open - source learning organization) and signed up for its machine - learning course. This course was actually about learning Teacher Li Hongyi’s course. Since we were required to finish it within 14 days, I could only skim through it in a cursory way, getting a general understanding of some basic concepts in machine learning.
Some time ago, I found Mu Shen’s “Hands - on Machine Learning” tutorial on Bilibili. I think it’s very well - explained. Watching it together with Teacher Li Hongyi’s videos, it seems very friendly to beginners. I’m still learning it currently.
Life
The biggest challenge in life this year was home decoration. It was my first time decorating a house. Although it was a “semi - package” deal, it was still a huge challenge.
However, I still learned a lot during the home - decoration process.
I just want to talk about bargaining here. We chose the “semi - package” option, which means the decoration company helped us with the design, arranged workers, and provided auxiliary materials (such as cement, water, and electricity materials), but we had to buy the main materials ourselves, like floor tiles, wooden doors, glass doors, and floors, etc. In short, there were a lot of things to buy, and they were all not cheap, so bargaining was inevitable. Even though I’ve bought a lot of things, my bargaining skills are still at the beginner level.
Personally, I think bargaining can be divided into two types. The first type is when you already know the lowest price of the product. You just need to add a little money appropriately to let the merchant make a profit. The second type is when you don’t know the price situation of the product. In this case, bargaining is essentially a psychological tug - of - war.
Let’s talk about the first situation first, that is, when you already know the lowest price of the product. This actually truly tests the ability to collect information. But when we first enter a field that we’re completely unfamiliar with, it’s very difficult to comprehensively collect various information. At least, I haven’t found a good way to do it so far.
Now let’s talk about the second situation. This is actually more like the general sense of bargaining. But there are also many nuances. For example, you can’t go to a store too many times repeatedly. Otherwise, the merchant will know that you’re very satisfied with the product, and it will be very difficult to bargain at that time. There are many such details and skills. I admit that I still need to improve in this regard. Currently, my level is probably at the very basic stage.
Through home decoration, I also found that two old sayings are quite reasonable.
- “At home, rely on parents; outside, rely on friends.” During the decoration process, we referred to the designs and suggestions of many friends’ homes, and they also recommended many reliable stores, which saved us a lot of time and energy.
- “The old are shrewder.” When buying things, I met an elderly lady who showed me what real bargaining is.
Investment
Investment is the part I least want to write about this year.
Maybe the market thought my rate of return last year was good, so it gave me a wake - up call this year.
As of today, my rate of return this year is - 0.82%.
Let’s just talk about one particular fund.
I started regularly investing in the CSI 500 index fund from the beginning of last year (and also manually increased my investment occasionally). The return situation last year was actually very poor, but this year it was very good. I remember that at most, I had a return of about 25% - 30%. Then, after the home - decoration started, I was a bit busy, and I didn’t check the fund for about 20 days. When I checked it again, the return was only 5%. I was stunned and felt like crying but had no tears. So don’t believe the nonsense about deleting the app after buying. You still need to check your positions appropriately from time to time. Otherwise, you’ll end up like me, wasting two years in vain.
Reading
I read a total of 9 non - technical books this year.
To be honest, this is the year I’ve read the most books since starting work. Let me briefly introduce three books that I like.
The first one is “Financial Freedom through Ten - Year Regular Investment in Funds” by Ding Da. This book mainly explains knowledge about fund regular investment. In fact, I started regularly investing in funds a long time ago, and I had some concepts or vague feelings about many of the knowledge points mentioned in the book. But I couldn’t express them well. It was not until I finished reading this book that I suddenly saw things clearly. What was once veiled became clear.
The second book is “The干法” by Mr. Kazuo Inamori. Actually, I don’t quite agree with one of the viewpoints in the book: even if you don’t like your current position, you should try to make yourself like it, which even feels a bit like self - hypnosis (I’m not sure if my understanding is accurate; this is just my personal feeling). However, I think many other viewpoints in the book are quite beneficial. For example, when dealing with a job, you should do your best to do it well, regardless of the result. But often, the result is good.
This book is very thin and can be finished in half a day. I recommend that you read it when you have time. You can see some reasons why Mr. Kazuo Inamori became a world - famous business master from this book.
The third book is “Legal Common Sense You Must Know” by Mr. Zhang Zhiqiang. In fact, I’ve been looking for relatively popular legal books since last year, but unfortunately, I haven’t found a book that everyone thinks is very good. This book only has a score of 6.6 on Douban Reading, but I think it’s still okay and worth reading. This book uses common scenarios in life as examples to explain relevant legal knowledge. For example, if friends have a meal and drink together, and then one of them has a car accident after driving, do the people at the dinner table have any responsibility? What should be done when the 70 - year property right of a commercial housing expires?
If you’re interested in law, I also recommend that you read this book.
Blog
Last year, I set two small goals for this year. One was to write a blog post every week. Obviously, I was slapped in the face. I didn’t achieve this small goal. Especially since October, I rarely updated because I spent my weekends visiting home - decoration building material markets, which was even busier than weekdays…
Actually, when I set this goal last year, it wasn’t just about the number. I hoped that I could make progress every week, and writing blogs is a good way to check.
This year, I won’t set small goals. I’ll just briefly talk about some ideas for this small website next year.
This year, I basically wrote some notes casually, without serious planning. There are even a lot of typos in the notes. Next year, I plan to take this small website more seriously and operate it as my own product.
Small Goals
Last year, I had two small goals. One was about the number of blogs, as mentioned above. The other was to increase my income by 2000 yuan besides my salary and investment.
I actually achieved this small goal, but I’m not satisfied. Because the way I achieved it is not sustainable. In the first half of the year, I helped a friend develop a small application, and as a thank - you, he gave me some money. But this kind of thing won’t happen all the time, and it still falls within the scope of “one - time income”, that is, once I stop working, there will be no income.
Summary
Learning from last year’s lessons, I won’t set any flags this year to avoid being slapped in the face again next year.