My First Year At Hooq

It has been a year of learning and growth, so much has changed and I feel like I've came so far since last year, and yet. I still see the tracks disappearing off into the horizon of all the things I have yet to learn.

The completion of this first year at Hooq marks my third year in software, with the other two being in a more traditional company Hooq is much closer to the startup culture and I am loving it. I feel the more fluid startup style is a much better fit for me I try not to be too formal or take myself too seriously, yet I take my work seriously and I think the startup model is something that fits this person type. It requires a lot of self discipline as it always feels more of a give and take than most forms of business and this is great and it has proven to me I would be hard pressed to go back to a more traditional business style.

Hooq was my first experience working with React as well, I came in from an Angular background and initally I hated a lot about React. It was messy, difficult to understand how everything came together, and I mean what even is Redux? Well it also didn't help that the project is also pretty big and was only expanding, needless to say the first few months I spent a lot of long nights trying to wrap my head around the code. It was hard and frustrating but also has proven to be quite the learning experience and one that I value greatly, I have been somewhat converted to the church of React.

I enjoy pretty much all the modern frontend frameworks although I still feel Vue and React are the right amount of flexabilty and speed to make them viable for most projects. Where as Angular is much bigger and more of a batteries included approach that does a lot well but normally has such a high barrier to entry that most small projects don't justify this level of setup and configuration. I have even come to better understand Redux and actually now do quite like it. With React came CSS in JS, we use styled-components which is great (emotionJS is better) and really fits well into the React ideology and component based architecture.

I have also gotten much more involved in the development community in Singapore attending more meetup, generally in JavaScript and CSS and even talking twice this year relating to JavaScript! Which has been a great experience and I hope to do more in this coming year and really ramp up the quality of my talks as well. Hooq also introduced me to the Agile methodology as a framework for getting stuff done, and it is really great and I do like a lot of what it has to offer with the aim of empowering teams and creating more of a flat structure, now of course people don't always like this but I believe it helps create a much more open community that encourages more discussion.

And of course I've met a lot of awesome people with similar interests and prove a lot of great conversations ranging from code to pretty much anything that catches that days topic. The people are all awesome and a pleasure to work with everyday and really help to make the company what it is and I feel I've learnt so much from them and hope to learn even more as I continue to work with them.

It has been a hugely positive year for me this first year at Hooq, it has been very stressful and challenging but also fun and highly rewarding and that is exactly what I am after in any role. As I move onto my second year I look forward to the challenge ahead as I grow ever more comfortable within my position and start exploring even more ways to improve myself and grow both personally and professionally.

It has been a great first year, I am looking foward to the next.