I won’t be the first one to tell that 2016 was a hard year. Looking back though, I could accomplish almost everything I planned for the year. Without getting sentimental, I can think of the following wrap-up ;)

What happened in 2016

• This was my 3rd year in Berlin. It’s a tough city to learn German, however I’m proud that I was able to get B1 certificate; I feel very much comfortable now living here, I’d say language barrier is destroyed finally! Beside learning the language, getting certificate was particularly important for me - I’m a self learner and was preparing for an exam for 4 months at home, without going to language courses, so certificate is a small reward.
• I started to live healthy, literally. This includes eating healthy food, and doing exercises 3 times a week.
• I learned how to make coffee! More precise, I learned how to make good coffee. In fact, my morning coffee ceremonies help me to have a good start of a day.

(now switching the context)

• I learned how to build RESTfull API’s. Sounds weird on one side, as I am working on API’s for a very long time. However, it was an interesting year with a great learnings and only now I feel comfortable to tell that I have some opinion on that topic.
• I’ve talked about this a lot in my blog, so will keep it short. I started my studies on algorithms, this is very interesting and exciting, but never ending process and I hope to write a lot about it in 2017.
• I’ve learned a new programming language. Yes, it’s Kotlin! With the help of it I started to have a deep (this word is important here) interest on functional programming languages (more on this below).
• Ah, I started a blog. I love it now.

What comes next?

• I’m going to learn cooking. I’ve some skills now, but all those books at home (my wife’s personal collection) about art of cooking are so attractive!
• I’m going to learn Spanish.
• I really hope to start practicing meditation. This is one of the most challenging tasks, and is pending from this year.
• Of course there is going to be a new programming language. It is Scala. I’m in process already, I love it and have something to share with you soon.
• I want to understand what the hell is Data Science. I’ll try to share my learnings and also open source small projects ;)
• I feel like it’s time to give back something to the community. I’m planning to actively contribute to open source projects which are waiting for my commits!

Last by not least, I’m going to write code for Soundcloud soon! This is very exciting and challenging itself (more details on upcoming post)!.

Meanwhile, I’m still in Friendsurance, where I spent my year, so don’t forget to contact in case you want to work with us.