Year in Review: 2020
Last year, while I was listing my goals for the year 2020, I never thought that this year will affect our lives in ways we never imagined. On one hand, global pandemic affected almost all of us negatively in one way or another but at the same time, it changed our perspective regarding a lot of things.
Starting from random news of a couple of cases to distant acquaintances getting infected to close family and loved ones catching the virus, each passing month left us more damaged than before. But despite all this, 2020 helped me a lot to grow both personally and professionally. It made me realize what’s truly important in life.
I normally never write ‘year in review’ but this year was all about getting out of my comfort zone, facing my fears and doing things I never did before.
Humble Beginnings: My First Talk
I started the year by giving my first (second, if you count presenting in a workshop) talk in ‘Swift Pakistan Lahore Meetup IX’ on the topic of ‘How to apply for WWDC Scholarships’.
During my student life, I always felt a lack of awareness among students regarding the opportunities which they have during their student life. Big Tech Giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft continue offering programs and events for students which can help in boosting their profile a lot, but there was no one to tell me these things during my student life. The main motivation behind this talk was to share my experience of winning WWDC Scholarship, challenges which I faced during the submission, my unfortunate visa rejection and the opportunities I got after my graduation because of this scholarship.
I also showed the audience a demo of my work of EmojiGame in which I worked on integration of CoreML and CreateML.
Giving my first ever talk in front of an audience which consisted of both students and professionals was an amazing experience in itself, but I felt really amazed by the response I got after the talk. I got contacted by a number of students (who watched my talk live) showing their interest in the scholarship. Proud of you guys. 🤩
SwiftUI
“Design is intelligence made visible”
It won’t be wrong to say that SwiftUI entirely changed the way we perceive iOS development. For me, SwiftUI made a better design (not just UI, but also code architecture) more easily achievable.
During my job at VisionX, I worked on the revamp of the application which was developed in UIKit using SwiftUI. At the end not only it reduced the total number of lines, it resulted in cleaner and reusable code and improved UI. I especially loved working on SwiftUI animations. Despite all these pros, SwiftUI is quite immature in certain things. With the announcement of SwiftUI 2.0 in WWDC 2020, many improvements and new features were introduced. Though there is still room for improvement but SwiftUI is gonna be the future. 🔥
CodeMentor
This year, I also joined CodeMentor as an iOS Mentor, where I provide consultation for Swift, CoreML and iOS related issues.
This experience led me to realize that Mentorship not only helps mentees and students who are struggling with issues, it also helps me to improve myself with every new session. I had sessions with people belonging to different backgrounds, which not only improved my communication skills, but also taught me more about diversity and inclusion. I learnt how to listen attentively, identify the actual issue and solve it with them instead of solving it for them.
One important lesson I learnt was never to use the word ‘Obviously’. Just because it’s obvious for you doesn’t mean it’s obvious for everyone. I used to think that technical skills matter the most in terms of success of a mentor but now I realize that although technicality is an important aspect, it’s not everything. Empathy, understanding and willingness to help others are the real secret ingredients.
Erasmus Mundus Scholarship
Last but not least, one of the biggest highlights of the year for me was winning an Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters Degree Scholarship in Advanced Systems Dependability by three European Universities (Université de Lorraine — France, Maynooth University — Ireland, University of St. Andrews — Scotland). Despite all the uncertainties, I was able to start my studies in Universite de Lorraine in September.
Erasmus is an experience which changed my life in a lot of ways. I moved from Islamabad, Pakistan to Nancy, France in September. Leaving my family, comfort zone, and lifestyle was a difficult but important experience which made me more strong, mature, organized and responsible in just a couple of months.
Other than that, Erasmus is not just a masters studies. It’s a multicultural experience which is the most important aspect of this program. From making friends belonging to various countries, to travelling alone, to experiencing many different cultures at once, advantages are just too much to summarise here.
Although, COVID minimized the travel opportunities but 2020 proved to be a starting point for my travel journeys. This year I visited 5 different cities, explored different cultures and met a lot of people.
Planning Ahead
Looking back, 2020 has not been a perfect year but nevertheless, I was able to achieve most of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year.
Though, I’m starting with a different set of goals this year, I’m more flexible in terms of how to achieve them, but more focused on where to put my energy. Starting this year with the biggest hope that we get a COVID-free, more healthy and more connected world. 🙏
