In this blog post, I want to share my developer journey in 2022 with you. This year happened a lot. I went to my first developer event. I found new friends and had a lot of fun. The learnings I had this year also were huge. Let's take a look at it!
The first Event - SCUC 2022
I was developing some apps and plugins with Shopware. I also worked at some shops at my work.
One day I saw a post on Twitter for the Shopware Community Unconference and I thought it would be nice to attend.
Unfortunately, there were no tickets available anymore. Luckily Dockware has raffled some tickets. I was one of the lucky winners.
Big thanks to Dockware once again ❤️!
The Event
I never attended an event before so I had no clue what to expect. But this event was amazing! The first thing you got was a personalized Shirt!
Now we have a Shirt and a map to find all rooms. I was attending this event alone and it still was amazing! The Shopware Community is lovely and I could talk to anybody.
At this event, there was no schedule because it was an UnConference. I was pretty confused at the beginning but I enjoyed this format.
Anybody can give a talk about any topic. You simply write the topic down on a paper and everybody can vote on a topic. The topics with the most votes are getting picked and the schedule is made on the fly.
If you have bad luck there are two talks you want to attend at the same time but I guess you face the same issues at other conferences as well.
For the breaks, we also had a little gaming area. This UnConference was just perfect! Nothing was missing and I had a lot of fun and found a lot of people to talk to. After this event, I fell in love with Shopware and the Shopware Community 💙. So I decided to attend more Shopware Events and I did!
Shopware Community Day
A couple of months after my first event I was invited to the Shopware Community Day. I wrote some very basic Shopware Apps and participated in the App Contest. That's how I got invited!
Now the Shopware Community Day was a completely different event. 1,000 people on site, 3 stages and a lot of talks. Most of the time I spent at the Tech Stage. Since the seats were limited there was also an area to watch the tech stage on a tv.
This was also a good area to meet some people to talk with. I attended this event alone again but this time I did know some faces from the SCUC! I had a great time and a lot of fun.
If you ever touched Shopware I highly recommend attending a Shopware Event. You will not regret it!
Blog
I'm at the very beginning of my developer career but I decided to start this blog in 2022. While developing some Shopware Plugins I faced issues and found out that I'm not the only one who is struggling.
So I started by writing about Shopware CMS Blocks. I also wrote a detailed blog post about CMS Elements. I hope this blog can help a few people.
You may have already noticed a did some Shopware stuff in 2022. I enjoyed it and hope I can even do a bit more in 2023.
Shopware Boostday
And I'm writing about Shopware again. They just do a lot for their community and it's pretty cool to be part of it! This Boostday took place at the Shopware headquarters in Schöppingen and online.
At the campus, we were about 30 participants. We had a lot of fun and I think a couple of PRs were created. On the first day, we also went to Retro Nerds and played some games! It was a lot of fun and a lot of very old games to play.
After we went back there was a very good BBQ for us. A lot of participants stayed until after midnight to code. The next morning the event continued. It was a great event once again! If you want to get more impressions take a look at that blog post.
My highlight at this event was at the very end. It was an orange PHP elephant flying into my arms. Big thanks to the Kellerkinder 🧡.
Now my Cody finally found a friend.
Hacktoberfest
Every year in October there is the Hacktoberfest. 2022 was the first year I also participated.
Hacktober is all about Open Source that's why I decided to hack a bit on Shopware. At the Boost Day I learned how I can contribute to Shopware which was a great help!
I created some Pull Requests and completed Hacktoberfest successfully. The PRs I made were very basic and you can read about them here.
I was a bit too late and got no shirt but that's okay. 2023 I will do my best and earn myself the shirt!
What else?
At the end of the year, I also took a look at tailwind. It's pretty popular and if you already used it you know why. I like tailwind but what I'm missing are some components.
So I also took a look at some tailwind components. Here are my top 3:
Of course, you also could write components yourself but I like using what's already there.
The framework I used in the last months of the year was Nuxt3. Sometimes it was fun and sometimes it was a pain. I guess that's what you feel with every framework.
Goals for 2023
It's always good to have some goals and to write them down. So let's do it right here right now! At the end of the year 2023, I can see how many of those goals I have accomplished so this is also pretty cool. So here's my list:
Publish at least 3 Shopware Apps
Increase my MRR with Shopware to at least 100€
Complete Hacktoberfest 2023 and get the shirt
Read at least 3 Books
Participate in at least 2 Hackathons
Be part of at least 3 Shopware Events
Get Cody Vuelette (the purple Shopware PHP elephant)
Earn at least 2 more Badges on Hashnode
Write a Shopify App
I think that's a good list already. I also could add something like learn "XYZ" but you can't track that right? I also would like to improve some of my skills but tracking that is also not that easy so that's my list for 2023!
Conclusion
2022 was my first year as a real developer. In the years before that coding was just a hobby for me. Now it's my job and I love it! I think 2022 was also the greatest year so far for me.
I learned a lot and participated in some pretty cool events. My favorite event that year was the SCUC. It felt like I became part of the Shopware Community from the first second. 2022 was the year I fell in love with Shopware. So big thanks to all the lovely Shopware people. I hope in 2023 I will meet a lot of you again 💙