Annual review 2023 - 1) Overview

I was recently going back through my blog over the years, and I read through my annual review of 2010. It was quite an enlightening little snapshot into my life at the time. A reflection of all that was important to me in that moment, and where I saw myself going into the new year.

I instantly regretted not sticking with the tradition and keeping a little time capsule for all the years in-between.

This year, I’m committing to writing a comprehensive review, but to do so I’ve structured myself a little template of sections of areas that I think are important to cover. If it works well, then maybe this will be a format for years to come. If it doesn’t, then I’ll iterate into something else next time around. Lord knows, it cant be any worse than the suggestion that ChatGPT came up with.

  1. Best of and memories
  2. Career
  3. Relationships
  4. Health
  5. Personal growth
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2024-01-27

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?