I have always hoped that everything I want to do can be quantified and recorded. Otherwise, as the years go by, I won’t remember what I have done. So I will make an annual summary.
As 2021 is coming to an end, reflecting on this year, many things happened, and I had many new ideas. It was also the year that had the greatest impact on me.
Technology and Work
In terms of technology and work, there isn’t much worth recording individually. The updates in my blog have been quite frequent, and I’ve barely managed to record and quantify most of my technical research. Here are just some notes.
In 2021, I published a total of 24 articles (#2021), recording a large number of technical notes, with a total of 160 articles, amounting to 631,000 words.
I improved the hot update solution based on HotPatcher, releasing 41 versions in 2021, making it stronger and more complete than a year ago.
In 2021, I received the Open Source Hot Search Excellent Award, Open Source Collaborative Project Award, and Open Source Collaborative Individual Award from Tencent, as well as a patent application.
The open-source project HotPatcher was recognized by the company and has been used by more internal and external projects, generating value that makes me very happy.
I developed a new open-source project ResScannerUE, improved the previous project FLAG UE Launcher, and iterated updates on other open-source projects.
I submitted a PR for UE on GitHub, which was merged into UE5. Although it only fixed a bug in the toolchain, it was a first step.
I developed a Chinese community knowledge base website for Unreal Engine: ue5wiki.com. I hope to establish a community-driven public knowledge website. It has cost me a lot of my spare time and effort, and I hope more friends can participate in promoting the development of the UE technology community.
The reason for doing this is that I found that purely technical articles are too easily forgotten. Moreover, technical content in the UE Chinese community is scattered across various platforms, making it difficult to categorize and retrieve conveniently. For authors and readers, the flow of information is insufficient, which can lead to writing articles that no one reads or struggling to find content. To avoid this problem, I happened to understand a little bit of web knowledge, so I redeveloped and deployed such a website based on Hexo and Wikitten, allowing more people to find articles they care about more easily. Increasing the flow of technical content and forming long-term knowledge accumulation is my vision.
In the first half of 2021, I passed my promotion review. The process of the defense was a summary of the technical research in my work. I took it as a review process, discovering shortcomings through the judges’ perspectives, and then tried to solve and improve them. The accumulation of technical knowledge is very important so that I don’t run out of material when preparing.
I continuously improved my previous articles and technical notes. Technical accumulation is indeed a gradual process, and the articles I write will be limited by my technical level at that time, having uncomprehensive or even incorrect expressions that need constant correction and supplementation.
Thoughts on Life
In 2021, I had my own family, which made me very happy and fulfilled. I developed some different mindsets and ideas for living life. Life is not just about work and technology; it also includes family and living. The recent events regarding Maohong (R.I.P) had a significant impact on me. Nothing is more important than living healthily. Looking at the current issues with a broader mindset, if we stretch the time span, there is actually nothing that cannot be solved. I will try to maintain a mindset of a “empty cup.”
Many things in both technology and life, I believe two things are very hard to achieve: starting and persevering. Taking the first step requires courage, and persistence requires willpower, especially when things are unclear. Inner doubts often overcome these challenges, leading to missed opportunities or wasted efforts. That’s why the saying “to go a hundred miles is to be halfway there” exists—because they lack that determination. In everything I do, I must consider the opportunity cost. The goal of effort is to minimize the costs associated with choices, using limited resources to create more things that can generate greater value.
I believe that in everything I do, I must elevate the intent of what I want to accomplish. Creating something is not just to meet my needs; it should also fulfill similar needs for others. Writing an article, I should aim to be as comprehensive and professional as possible within my capability. Strive to achieve the highest, and you may settle somewhere in the middle. Even if I don’t do my best, it won’t be bad.
In 2021, my understanding of technology, products, and value, as well as my career planning, led to many ideas, which I will discuss in detail later.
Shortcomings of 2021
In 2021, I feel that one of my shortcomings is that I still haven’t stepped out of my technical comfort zone. I believe that technical people cannot rely solely on past experience. They need to learn to challenge more difficult or unfamiliar fields, to be willing to experiment, rather than being lazy.
Sometimes I still have episodes of procrastination. I have drafts of articles that I started but took a long time to complete. I couldn’t finish them all in one go, so I need to try to avoid that in the future.
In 2021, I hardly read a book from start to finish continuously. Work and technical research took up almost all my time, and I didn’t read any “miscellaneous books” outside of technology. I can’t just see the world from a technical perspective. I hope to finish the following books next year:
- The Collapse of the Celestial Empire: A Re-examination of the Opium War
- Coalition Government and One-Party Rule: Nationalist-Communist Political Struggles from 1944 to 1946
- The UNIX History: Legends and Memories
- Selected Works of Mao Zedong
There was a time when I wanted to try doing some industry information analysis and broaden my perspective on the industry, on the blog’s Information page. However, due to various circumstances, I couldn’t continue, so I need to reflect on that.
I listed many ideas and things I wanted to do, but I didn’t finish them. In my 2021 to-do list, I listed 45 technical goals, of which only 24 were achieved. Some goals were too complex or vague, consuming too much time and energy. I should analyze each to-do item specifically and assess the actual task load so as to make full use of limited spare time to accomplish more.
