Another year is over. It’s time to look back and reminisce.

The most prominent event of the year is, of course, the birth of my son Alex. Being a parent is sometimes exhaustive, but it is always great fun.

Since I became a father, I don’t have much free time for running or cycling. Only recently I started jogging with a stroller. But I did my second IRONMAN in September in Italy despite total lack of training. It was very hard but I didn’t give up. As they say: Pain is temporary, pride is forever.

I did some cool things in the office too. Together with the awesome team behind the JetBrains Toolbox App, we prepared several feature-packed releases. Later in the year, almost half of our team changed for different reasons, but we continue going strong and have a lot of cool features waiting for release.

On the other news, I discontinued one unannounced project and joined another unannounced project. I still believe in the ideas I wanted to implement in the first one and think they will fit the new one as well. (Sorry, I know it may sound cryptic, I will share all the details as soon as we announce the product)

For the second time in my life this summer I became a mentor for an intern in my project. This time it was a very positive experience, both for the student and for me. She continued working with us after the internship, and this is the best possible outcome.

Also, I hope that my advice to those who didn’t get to the interview was helpful as well.

This year I’ve visited four conferences and gave there five talks in total. Together with meetups and internal company events, it’s more than I’ve ever done before. I’ve enjoyed the experience and want to continue presenting at the conferences. It’s great to share the knowledge, and I always learn something new when preparing for the talks.

I also continued to write in this blog. This year I focused on Kotlin, but I have other topics on my mind to cover next year.

Earlier this year I’ve announced Makefile plugin for IntelliJ. It has matured and has a good userbase. Other pet projects I started this year are not yet ready to be published. Stay tuned!

I have a lot of plans for the coming year but want to keep them secret for now. We’ll see in 365 days what I will have managed to achieve.

I wish you Happy New Year! 🎉 Dare to try something new in 2018!