With Thanksgiving just around the corner, there is no more appropriate time for a corny blog post about what I am thankful for. To fit within my ongoing theme, I'm not going to include the usual suspects (family, friends, etc.), and instead focus on what I'm thankful for in the realm of software engineering in 2018.
So in no particular order, here's my list of what I'm thankful for:
- All of the hardworking folks who contribute to open source software - So much of modern software is built upon open source foundations, and without the contributors there is no way this industry would be where it is today. Whether you're Linus Torvalds or you've just contributed some documentation to a small library, you have my gratitude.
- Stack Overflow - I can't imagine how many developer hours (read: how much money) Stack Overflow has saved both developers and businesses. I remember SO being my go-to for programming questions in college, and since then it has been an important part of my professional career. I know they've gotten some criticism recently about their community, but I am still thankful for everything they've done and continue to do to serve programmers out there.
- Wikipedia - Not specifically software-related, but I frequently use Wikipedia to get a high level understanding of virtually anything. It's just mind-blowing to me that there is such a repository of human knowledge out there for anyone to access.
- Visual Studio Code - This text editor from Microsoft has really grown on me. I'm not a fan of everything Microsoft does, but to me, Visual Studio Code feels like a step in the right direction for them.
- TypeScript - With JavaScript eating the world, it's basically an unavoidable language for a software engineer working on anything remotely web related. TypeScript's superset of JS provides quality of life improvements that make this "all JS all the time" age we live in a little more sane.