Numbers. Gifts. Money.

In 5 hours, a new year will start, 2014. But, let’s take a look at 2013 first.

I wrote 15 articles, including this one. This is lesser than the year before (18) whereas one of my 2013’s goals was to blog more… However, more than 70.000 unique visitors read my thoughts. That is really amazing! Even better, on Tuesday, July 30, 2013, From STUPID to SOLID Code!’s publication date, this website attracted 6000 unique visitors.

The 3 most viewed posts have been From STUPID to SOLID Code! (20.652), On Open Sourcing Libraries (11.779), and DDD with Symfony2: Folder Structure And Code First (9.035). It is worth mentioning that REST APIs with Symfony2: The Right Way got 59.723 unique visitors this year, even if this article has been written in 2012.

These 3 blog posts talk about Open Source, and web development. Today, I must confess that I am not a PHP/web developer, I am not even a developer. I am a PhD student. My daily job is related to industrial computing and software testing. I don’t do programming, and if I would have to, I would use C#/.NET. I met people at SymfonyCon Warsaw who didn’t understand these facts, and/or why I was doing so many things for the community, but never for my own business. It is obviously well-accepted to opensource things that have been created at work, but not to contribute to open source on his spare time, just for fun. I thought quite a lot about these questions, and I am still not sure to know the right answer, so let me rephrase the problem: who would do that otherwise? It is an open-ended question.

Talking about Open Source, Geocoder reached 1200+ stargazers, while Negotiation has been installed more that 116.000 times, and BazingaJsTranslationBundle has been installed more than 77.000 times, meaning it is my most used bundle under my GitHub account (“my” most used bundle would actually be FOSJsRoutingBundle). My next most installed project will probably be: JsonpCallbackValidator. Also, Anchorify.js is my most starred JavaScript library.

According to this list, I am the 47th most active GitHub user. Cool story, bro. Anyway, all this Open Source work takes time and costs energy. So, next time you wonder why I am doing all of this without being rewarded or without using it myself, please don’t ask!

I am rewarded all the time. Most of the time because people use my stuff, and sometimes, they are even happy with them! I receive emails or tweets with kind words every week. This is really great, and so rewarding! This year, I tweeted my Amazon Wish List, and I had the pleasure to receive gifts for Christmas:

In no particular order, I would like to thank @pborreli, @weaverryan, @leannapelham, @lsmith, @mathiasverraes, @toin0u and @youb_s for these awesome gifts!

I know money in Open Source is always a tricky point. Be sure that I won’t get paid twice for the Open Source work I am doing. I am not sponsored by anyone, and over the last 3 years, I never asked for money. I don’t need money to create new projects, or to maintain them. However, domain names, GitHub account, and so on, are not free ;-)

Next year, I will probably continue my Open Source stuff, and I will try to learn more things. I have new ideas to improve REST support in PHP/Symfony, but I would also love to expand my knowledge with new languages. Why not bringing my knowledge into a new community? Who knows. I also have a lot of books to read, and I promise to write a review for each book I receive.

On a personal plan, I lost 15 kilograms in 2013. I changed my way of life. I don’t drink alcohol anymore (I am not an alcoholic, I just stopped drinking beers and so on during parties or dinners). I try to eat less meat, in order to become a flexitarian. I feel way better. I also do a lot of sport, mainly running, mountain biking, squash, and soccer. I have three goals for 2014:

• running 10 kilometers in less than 40 minutes;
• swimming faster, and better (~2kms);
• competing in a triathlon.

My other goals for 2014 are:

• reading more books;
• writing more, maybe trying to write a book;
• speaking more at conferences;
• improving my English;
• dominating the world.

I wish you a Happy New Year, and all the best for your family, and you! See you next year!

Thank you ♥ ♥ ♥