Reflecting on the past year 🔍 - what I find particularly fascinating is that even though I've spent most of my available time on work-related (billable) projects, the most significant progress I've made has been on my personal projects, such as django-cast (non-billable).

This is in stark contrast to my early days as an employed developer. Even five years ago, after several years of freelancing, I would have said I had a few side projects, but the major developments happened during work hours. There seems to be a shift. Interesting.

The most significant change in my daily work has been becoming more comfortable with frontend development. Most of the time I use a combination of Django, htmx, and Alpine.js, and I'm very happy with the results. JavaScript and HTML, which used to be unfamiliar territory, have now become more approachable. Now, just adding a bit of CSS will be enough for me to become dangerous 😁.

I've also been deeply engaged with the topic of Large Language Models (LLMs). Incorporating LLMs into my daily workflow has significantly boosted my productivity. While I haven't quantified this impact, it's substantial enough that I don't hesitate to invest in subscriptions. Up to now, my development work was not directly focused on LLMs, but I'm planning to shift this in the coming year, aiming to undertake projects where LLMs are a core component of the system.

Django-Cast

I've made substantial progress on this project. It's hard to believe that it's only been a year since we released our first podcast episode using the new CMS based on Wagtail.

Features

• Code blocks with syntax highlighting for the CMS
• Created separate database models for blog posts and podcast episodes, recognizing that features like iTunes keywords, relevant for podcasts, are not applicable to standard blog posts - the models for blog and podcast were split up, too
• Integrated Wagtail API endpoints into the django-cast browsable API, including the addition of new endpoints for pages and images
• Added a noindex flag to prevent search engines from indexing a blog and its posts
• You can now personalize your django-cast based blog's appearance and style using custom themes (big one)
• Added support for htmx used in pagination, search, faceted navigation, and theme switching
• Introduced a basic Vue.js theme as a proof of concept, without any styling, to explore its feasibility – and it turns out to be possible!
• Media file backup management command for videos, images, and audio
• Organizing content with categories and tags for posts
• Galleries have been updated to include a layout parameter, allowing for two styles atm
  • The default setting renders galleries using a web component
  • The htmx option fetches the gallery modal using htmx

Fixed Bugs

• Resolved a significant issue in the comment spam filter. Since then, there hasn't been a single misclassification of comments, an impressive feat considering the model is a naive Bayes classifier. In 2023, the Python Podcast website received 2,251 comments, out of which only 53 were genuine.
• Optimizing the podcast feed performance was achieved by implementing caching for audio file sizes

Infrastructure Achievements

• The codebase is now almost fully type-annotated
• Test coverage has reached 100%, and my goal is to maintain it at this level
• Redesigned the module for filtering, searching, and faceted navigation
• Completely restructured the responsive image handling code and phased out the deprecated wagtail_srcset

Roadmap for 2024

• Transcripts
• Better designed default theme - at the moment I'm using an rather unstyled bootstrap5 theme
• Documentation and example project - the example project is probably not working and the documentation is far from complete
• Performance
  • Feed generation / maybe paged feeds?
  • Where do all those queries come from?
  • My goal is to have sub 100ms response times for all major views

Kptncook

• Export recipes to Paprika
• Some smaller fixes

I'm uncertain about continuing to maintain this. The transition to pydantic2 was a mess, there's a lot of bug reports, and unfortunately, all my attempts to bring new developers on board have been unsuccessful.

Data Science Tutorial

Revived the old project 😄. I'm considering blending the tutorial aspect with podcast transcript work, perhaps incorporating some RAG for podcast-based chat interaction? Exciting possibilities lie ahead!

New Software I didn't use Before

• Started using Obsidian for daily writing activities
• Switched from Mealie to Paprika for managing my cooking recipes
• Adopted Playwright for end-to-end testing

Areas I Aim to Focus On More

• Data Science - prevent my skills from rusting
• Only managed to release six podcast episodes this year, quite surprising as I didn't anticipate such a low count
• Just went to one conference this year 😱: beyond tellerrand 2023
• Hold a three day pytest course at the local university - good, but I expected to do more teaching
• Start making music again - this has been on pause for almost 2.5 years because of reasons