Sunil Shenoy

Birthdays seem to come by much quicker than before. Three nine. Another year closer to the next milestone birthday. I wondered if I would still be as excited about birthdays, and I’m happy to report that the excitement continues.

While looking for last year’s post on the blog, I didn’t have to scroll far—it’s clear I haven’t been writing much this year. I always question why I don’t write here more, knowing that I enjoy the entire process.

Sitting down to write always brings a huge smile to my face. It gives me the chance to go through my calendar and reflect on everything I’ve been up to this year. When I read this post next year, I’ll get to relive these moments all over again.

A few years ago, I decided to stop creating long to-do lists for the year and instead focus on themes. The idea was to do more of the things I enjoy. I’m happy to say that this year, I managed to stick to all the themes I set out for myself.

Create

This year, I built and launched two new applications, and I’m happy with the work I’ve done. There are two more applications in progress, and I hope to share more about them soon. Overall, I’m pleased with how the “create” theme shaped up this year.

I spent time relearning Ruby on Rails, Swift, and SwiftUI. On top of that, I improved my skills in React Native, Node.js, and debugging software.

Travel

A few days after my birthday last year, I went to New Zealand. As I write this, I’ve booked another trip to visit on January 3rd. I can’t get enough of that beautiful country. As much as I love Australia, New Zealand has a special place in my heart.

Here’s where I traveled to this year:

• New Zealand
• Thailand
• Uluru
• Gold Coast
• Melbourne
• India
• Poland
• Berlin
• The Hague, Netherlands

It was wonderful catching up with friends and family, some of whom I hadn’t seen in nine years. On the way back, I promised myself to visit more places where friends have moved.

Fitness

December, January, and the first half of February were amazing for my fitness—I was the fittest I’ve ever been. I even posted a picture of myself from a trip on Instagram, and it’s now one of my favorites. Whenever someone asks if I’ve ever had abs, I proudly show them that picture.

However, I also experienced my most unfit period this year. After returning from my trip, I stopped working out for a few months and gained a lot of weight. The see-saw of weight gain and loss is something I’ve come to terms with.

On a positive note, I’ve been back on track for the past three months, and I’m now as fit as I was in the early part of the year. With my cousin’s wedding in December next year, I’ve told her I’ll try to be as ripped as possible for the event. I’ve got one year to stay consistent and aim for that goal.

This year reminded me that fitness is a journey, not a destination, and I’m proud of my progress.

Love

Another unsuccessful year in this department. A heartbreak aside, there’s nothing significant to report.

Here’s to seeing what 2025 has in store for this chapter of my life.

Overall

2024 has been a really good year. My finances are back on track, I’m enjoying the work I’m doing, I love where I’m living, and I feel quite optimistic about the future. I can’t wait to share more about the software I’ve been working on over the last three months.

Themes for 2025

• Travel: I’ve booked a few tickets.
• Fitness: Prepare for my cousin’s wedding in December.
• Love: Let’s see how this goes.
• Launch/Enhance: After spending 2024 creating, it’s time to launch, listen to customer feedback, and enhance.

I remember seeing this message on one of my gym friends' t shirt a few months ago. It’s not the first time I saw this message—I had seen it countless times before—but this was the first time it stayed with me.

I was listening to “The One Thing” podcast while driving around Sydney last week, and in one of the episodes, they spoke about how, when they got started with their project, they decided to spend one hour working on the thing they were passionate about. An hour a day dedicated to things they wanted to see in the world.

“I could dedicate an hour a day to work on something I want to see in the world,” I told myself. I have had a long list of projects that I’ve been wanting to work on, but between a full-time job, gym, social life, and reading, I never took time to work on the projects I wanted to see in the world. The podcast was a great reminder to start. Getting older was a great reminder to start.

The last two weeks have been exciting. I wake up with plans for that one hour. There is something to look forward to every day. There is no pressure to plan that one hour, but I have managed to work on one of the projects I’ve had in mind for a few years now. The goal is to launch it before my birthday. Having a deadline to ship has been great. Constraints are good. I have been pushing code out every day, but I am not yet ready to share the URL with everyone.

Is there something you have been wanting to get started with?

Zed.dev, an editor I use to build software, released their Linux version a few months ago. I vividly recall seeing the announcement on Hacker News. The timing was perfect, as I had just ordered my first non-Mac laptop and decided to venture into the Linux world after 15 years of exclusively using Apple products.

However, the comments section of the announcement thread told a different story. People began comparing Zed to VS Code, IntelliJ, and other IDEs that have been in the market far longer. It saddened me to see such comparisons. Instead of congratulating the team on reaching their first milestone, critics were demanding to know why they hadn’t already achieved milestones two and three.

It’s important to remember that most software is a work in progress. Depending on the team’s decisions, software evolves almost daily. New features are added, new bugs are introduced, existing bugs are resolved, and there’s always something fresh being incorporated into the codebase as long as people remain motivated to improve the product. Zed made their IDE open-source, and it’s been inspiring to see numerous community members contribute to enhancing the software. From what I’ve read, it’s significantly improved since the first public version that shipped just a few weeks ago.

Will Zed have all the features that IntelliJ or Visual Studio Code boast? I don’t think so, nor does it need to. I’m quite satisfied with the current state of the software. They have a happy and willing-to-pay customer in me.

Last week, we made the difficult decision to shut down Brightpod. I was part of the team that created the software in 2012—twelve years ago. That’s more than a decade of working on something truly special.

I loved every minute of working on Brightpod. From discussing new features and designing new screens to interacting with customers, debating icons and fonts, and choosing servers, every moment was a joy.

Before I moved to Australia, I can’t recall a moment when I traveled without my laptop. I was dedicated to ensuring our customers had a seamless experience with the software I poured my heart into. I felt a deep connection to Brightpod, and I wanted everyone who used it to have a fantastic experience.

Working on Brightpod made me a better developer. It taught me to focus not just on writing code but also on building software that is truly usable. I learned the importance of user experience, design, and customer feedback.

We had a great run. For ten years, we offered a product loved by thousands of users, with steadily increasing revenue. However, I had different plans for my life and moved to Australia. With the team reduced to just Sahil and I, we put the product in maintenance mode, focusing on server uptime, performance, and security fixes.

A lot changed in the last five years. Many new tools launched in the project management space, often offering more features for free than we could provide. At first, a few customers canceled, then more followed. The cost versus revenue numbers became unsustainable.

Early this year, we discussed the best path forward for Brightpod. After several rounds of deliberation, we decided to sunset the product. As I clicked the button to send out the email, I had tears in my eyes. I spent the last two days reflecting on all the great times I had working on Brightpod.

To our Brightpod customers: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving Brightpod a try. To Komal, Kartik, Himali, Swati, Vinay and Katie: Thank you for working on Brightpod with me. And a special thanks to Sahil for letting me be a part of this journey for all these years. It was a pleasure working with you.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I read this blog post today The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday and I liked how the article started

I shall write some code everyday before or after work.

I have had that goal in my mind the last five years, yet somehow I never got started. Everything else got prioritised but the project I had in mind to work on. I would spend time worrying about tools than actually writing the code. Spending too much time at 10000ft view than getting down to ground and writing the code.

Here it goes. Day 1. I have the repository created. I have added reminders in my calendar to work on the idea every day. If it’s in my calendar, it gets done.

I was recently asked to build a new web application. After having worked in the tech industry and constantly learning new tools and languages, being handed an empty canvas to work with is not as much fun as I thought it would be.

React + Node.js backend? Go all in on Ruby on Rails? Serverless with Svelte frontend? You see where I am going with this. There were many options to choose from and a few days to make the decision.

I had to make the decision considering that this project would not need a lot of updates and I wanted to build this as soon as possible. My final choice to build the app? CodeIgniter with Alpine.js

Alpine.js is much fun to work with. A breath of fresh air after having worked with complex javascript frameworks for the last five years.

Finally thirty-eight. I felt thirty-eight when I was a year younger, so it feels good to be the age I have been feeling all year.

I am happy to be thirty-eight—another year on this beautiful planet surrounded by great friends and family. I feel great about this year—a year to be laser-focused towards my goals and start travelling again. Now that I don’t have to worry about visas anymore, Aussie Aussie Aussie.

As I sit down to write this, I feel happy and blessed. I got a few text messages last week from new and old friends who asked me what I would be doing on my birthday day and asked me to spend the evening with them.

My post last year started by thanking Manly, the suburb I moved to in Nov 2021. I need to continue the tradition. Moving to this suburb has been so good for me. I have never been this fit in my life, and I have never been this happy about where I have lived. As much as I miss my family and friends back home, this feels like home now. I wish family and friends could move here or spend time with me through the year.

A few friends did visit and stayed with me this year, which was the highlight of my time in this place—having people live with me or close by was great. Having good friends to spend time with after work or do other activities with, activities which you did alone, brought me so much joy.

The year that was

In January this year, I told myself that I should be chasing my dreams. It was high time. Each year, I would say “the next year,” and somehow 2023 felt like the best time to get started. Instead of working on multiple projects, I would work on the one project I was passionate about. I could not shake this thought for the entire month of Feb. I handed in my notice in mid-February. I told everyone I met about my plans and prepared to spend the rest of the year focusing on building my dream project.

March, April, and May were some of the best months of my life in Australia and Manly. I met so many people, ate so much good food, learned more about 2D programming and how to build games and did some of my best work on projects I worked on. BEST TIME EVER!!!

I wish I planned my finances better around working on my dream project. What I planned, as it turns out, was only 30%. I quickly realised I needed much more money to survive in this suburb. After having a positive bank balance for my adult life, being in -$50000 made me question continuing to work on my project. I was more stressed than enjoying my time building my project.

Something had to change. I paused my work on the project and applied for a few contract roles in Sydney, and I found myself a great project and team to work with. Finances are now back in order, and I am no longer stressed.

I hope to get back to working on my dream project soon. As of now, though, I am in a perfect place with work, social life and fitness. I don’t want to disturb this.

Here are a few personal highlights of last year:

• Exercised twice a day. At BFT with 5:15 Crew(now family) and myself at the local gym.
• Started group fitness 🥊. I never thought I would get into HIIT based training routine.
• More than 200 swims in the ocean.
• Almost died when attempting to swim from Manly to Shelly Beach and got rescued by lifeguards. I fear the ocean a little less now(more about this in another blog post)
• More in-depth relationships with new and old friends.
• Mom moving into the new apartment and telling me about the new birds she now gets to see.
• Travelling to New Zealand, India, Thailand, and Singapore with friends.
• Building more apps and writing better code than I did last year. I am much better at building native apps and working with node.js as a language.
• Friends from India in Australia to visit and stay.
• Being the best man at my best friend’s wedding.

My themes for last year were

• Create
• Dance
• Travel

I am soooooooo happy that I was able to spend the year focused on these themes. I was part of creating some excellent software, learning hip hop, salsa, and bachata, and I travelled a lot around Australia, New Zealand, India, Thailand, and Singapore.

2024

Themes for 2024:

• Create
• Travel
• Fitness
• Love

I hope you all have an excellent 2024. 🙌🏻🤗

I remember handing in the permanent residence application for Australia on Feb 14, 2018. I remember telling a friend that day that my love for Australia must be true cause I handed in the application on Valentine’s Day. After waiting for a good ten months and a few back and forth with the application process, on Dec 12th 2018 I received confirmation that my permanent residence application had been approved. I jumped with joy when I read the approval letter.

When you have been working towards something and all the stars align so you can have that thing, you rarely forget these moments.

Two moments I remembered while I sat down after I got the citizenship certificate:

I remember sitting in the Hong Kong airport for my first visit to Australia as a permanent resident. I had a 12-hour wait from when I landed in Hong Kong to when I was to fly out. After few hours of walking around, I checked into a hotel room. Four hours later, I walked around again, ate, and chatted with my good friend Archeet. I remember telling him I was looking for a return ticket to Mumbai from Hong Kong. Sitting in the airport for 8 hours, I started to think about life in India the last ten years. It was nothing but full of joyful moments. My niece was five years old, and being with her over the previous five years was outstanding. I could not think of why I was moving away from her. I remember Archeet messaging me then and telling me that I should go, stay for a few days and see how I feel. I could always return.

The second moment I remember was during Covid. Feb 2020. I had just moved to an apartment in a new suburb. I did not know anyone there, but I loved the suburb. The first month of living there was great. Setting up the new place and walking around to new restaurants and cafes. Covid started, and I was locked in an apartment, not knowing anyone or being able to meet in person with friends and collegues. A month into COVID-19, the isolation began to get to me mentally. I heard stories from friends and family back home about how they were together and having a great time while I was locked up alone in a room. I wanted to be there. Nothing else mattered then. Being a citizen was the last thing on my mind. I did follow the news very closely then. Compared to others, I was in a much better position. My job helped me pay rent and cover my food/living expenses. I decided to toughen up mentally and make adjustments to my living arrangements.

The road to becoming a citizen has had a few bumps. Being away from family and friends has been challenging. I have made some lifelong new friends here and met some great people. People who I would not have met and gotten to interact with had I not made the move. I have travelled to some great places, eaten some delicious food, and learned so much from this place. A place I now call home.

On 11th September 2023, I got my citizenship certificate. I jumped with joy as I got the certificate. The next day, I applied for the passport, and I could not stop smiling when I opened the envelope and held the passport. I cannot wait to start travelling in 2024.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi

A good friend in the gym made this card to celebrate being a citizen. ❤️

When you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. Being a free user of Slack, I have come to accept random changes Slack makes to its UI. Paid users should get a choice though, about changes to the UI Slack releases. Maybe an opt-out button and being able to choose a version they like.

I woke up this morning to a new UI for Slack. My initial reaction was “why”. As I started using it, though, the UI grew on me.

Change can be daunting, especially in the world of technology, where familiarity often feels like a warm embrace. While many of twitter grumble about the departure from the old look, I wholeheartedly embraced this transformation. The new Slack UI feels like fresh air – vibrant, colourful, and spacious.

The infusion of colours and additional space has made my daily interactions on Slack a more delightful experience. In a constantly evolving world, embracing change can open new possibilities. Slack’s new UI reminds us that sometimes stepping out of our comfort zone can lead to a brighter, more colourful perspective on our daily tasks, fostering creativity and efficiency. While some may resist change, I encourage you to explore and appreciate the revamped Slack UI for its fresh perspective to our digital workspace.

I have had this post in my draft folder for over five months. Each time I started to write this, I would cry and stop. But here it goes. I hope you all have or find a friend like Rajinikanth.

Rajinikanth, a really good friend of mine, passed away in February this year, and I have been thinking about him almost every day for the last few months. I have had so many good memories with him over nine years of knowing him. Before covid, every year for the previous nine years, I, Sneha and Rajini have gone travelling at least once. Planning the trip, enjoying the journey and planning the next trip a few months later. I would look forward to the call every year.

There were so many good memories, but these two conversations that I had with him are something I will remember forever.

We always have an option of not inviting you

I, Sneha and Rajini took the first trip to Bali in 2015. Other than the airline losing my bag, we had a really good time on a short three-day trip. Once back from the trip, I am not sure who put the thought in my head, but when planning the next trip and when on the call with Rajini, I asked him if he was sure about me joining him and Sneha. “we always have an option of not inviting you” he said. He said I should accept the offer when people ask instead of questioning it. A lesson I will remember forever. Rajini made me feel welcome.

I want to spend as much time with friends and family

I remember this day like it was yesterday. On the way back from Raglan to Auckland in New Zealand, I, Sneha and Rajini were in the same car. Rajini asked me what plans I had for the rest of the year/life, and I mentioned how I wanted to start a business, build excellent software and travel more with friends and family. I asked him what his plans were, and he said, “i just want to spend as much time with friends and family”. After returning from that trip, those words became part of my yearly goals—less time on the computer and more time with friends and family. Every year has been better thanks to that advice.

I will miss Rajini very dearly. I will miss getting that phone call from him every year, meeting him, drinking with him and sharing the stake. I hope you are having a great time up there, my friend. My world will not be the same without you.

Unless you are starting a personal project, the first thing you should be doing is writing a document with your thoughts about the project.

The more I work with different systems and businesses, the more I see that documentation around the project is always missing. I know it can be a daunting process to write all thoughts and strategies, but maybe we can start focusing on these two things:

• The system’s overall goal and why we are building what we are building.
• Why did we add X feature to the project, and when was it added?

When onboarding someone new or handing over the project to someone else, this could be a good base to help them understand your business/project—a good starting point for them to ask questions.

Being part of the software industry for over fifteen years now, I understand that expecting your favourite software/hardware to be available 100% of the time is nothing short of wanting to win the jackpot each time you buy a lottery ticket.

Software or hardware is bound to fail; when it does, people/companies responsible for maintaining the software/hardware fix it as soon as possible. Some do it faster than others, but very few write a postmortem report. I wish more companies wrote postmortem reports.

I love reading postmortem reports of software that I use frequently. Knowing what went wrong when you were expecting things to work gives your users an insight into why the software/hardware failed. Companies often depend on external services; sometimes, bugs are outside the company’s control.

Writing postmortem reports is also a practice I want to promote with teams/companies I work with. Most bug reports from internal users get an “it’s fixed, please try now” reply. For the internal user, this is often enough. Still, for the internal IT team, it is good to write a detailed postmortem report so that everyone learns about what went wrong and what needs to be considered as they continue to build and maintain the software.

Deno Deploy Postmortem

I should make this a regular post on my blog where I thank the internet and everyone who contributes to keeping things runnings.

Thank you to everyone working in the javascript space to continue building new JS frameworks and improving JS frameworks.

Thank you to everyone who is working on building and improving browsers.

Thank you to everyone who is working on building and maintaining servers and other parts of the infrastructure.

Thank you to everyone working on building and maintaining backend programming languages. PHP, Go, Rust, Java, Python, C, Dart.. and many more.

Thank you to everyone for building so many incredible things and constantly innovating.

Thank you for keeping things interesting for people like me and so many more.

All this and more is why I am overly excited every day.

Watching WWDC with a few friends is a yearly tradition. From watching it in person in Mumbai to now having conversations on iMessage about the latest updates to Apple’s ecosystem. I look forward to this day.

iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, it is always good to see Apple continue to invest in the software ecosystem. Each year, after the announcement, developers use these new APIs to build new features and some even new products. I have always looked at the ecosystem from the sideline. This year that changes. I am going to actively participate and build/launch a product—something for iOS and iPadOS.

Vision Pro looks like a great product. The pricing seems expensive, but the whole VR experience looks impressive. I would love to try it before I have more opinions about the product. From next year, I look forward to learning about visionOS and building a visionOS app.

Exciting times.