- Published on
2024 - Year in Review
When the year started, I was really worried about turning 24 - so worried that I started mentally preparing for 25 instead. I had some goals and plans for the year, but life turned out better than expected. This year has been unpredictable in all the good ways. As part of my annual tradition, I want to look back at the year that was.
In January, I went to iOS Conf SG - my first iOS conference outside of WWDC and India, and my first time leaving the country since WWDC 2019. Singapore was new to me, and I got to catch up with old friends and meet new people at the conference. Singapore felt like what India could have been if we'd focused on the right things. Their public transport is probably the best I've seen in any country I've been to - I explored for over 10 days spending less than SGD 25. My hotel was right above the Lavender metro station, so I could just hop down to the CBD for dinner. The only downside was the weather - hot, humid, and random rain. Still, I'd definitely go back or at least transit through Singapore on my next US trip.
In February, I got invited to the opening of Apple's new developer center in Bengaluru - their only one in India. Since then, I've been to multiple sessions covering everything from Swift tips to concurrency improvements, and lately, integrating Apple Intelligence in our apps. At the opening, I met Greg Joswiak, who's SVP of Worldwide Marketing at Apple. Having grown up watching Apple keynotes where Greg was always a prominent figure, this was pretty surreal. This month I also tried Air India's new A350 on my BLR route. Since that first flight, I've flown it over 10 times on the same route. Work-wise, I launched the most ambitious app I've worked on so far. It hit 50k downloads in just a few months with a crash-free rate of 99.97%. We built it entirely in SwiftUI - something I pushed hard for. Apart from some minor hiccups here and there, SwiftUI has proven to be a solid choice.
In March, I finally launched my personal finance app - Money Tracker. I managed to snag a great domain, moneytrack.ing, which brought in a surprising amount of traffic without any marketing (though I've since given it up). I also finally upgraded my setup with a 27-inch QHD monitor and a mechanical keyboard. Looking back, I should've gotten these way earlier instead of putting it off for so long.
In April, SwiftBLR and Intuit invited me to give a keynote on ML in iOS. My talk covered bringing existing models to iOS despite its performance limitations, the ins and outs of CreateML, how transfer learning works, and included a live demo of text classification in a SwiftUI app. I hadn't given a public talk in a while (used to do lots back in college), so the "ums" crept back in - something to work on for next time. The highlight of the month was finally getting an invite to attend WWDC 2024 in person!
In May, I experienced my first live cricket match in a stadium - the IPL Finals between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders. Not only was the stadium energy incredible, but watching my home team win the finals made it even more special!
June was the month I'd been looking forward to since January - my trip to WWDC 2024 in San Francisco. I flew via Hong Kong, where I had a nice 16-hour layover. I wrote about my experience here. WWDC itself was incredible. Seeing Apple's spaceship campus for the first time was surreal. I was very lucky to be part of the in-person keynote for two of the most recent big releases of Apple - SwiftUI in 2019 and Apple Intelligence in 2024. I got to meet some amazing people - Marques Brownlee from MKBHD, Sam Altman, and made some new friends along the way. What I didn't expect was Cupertino's summer heat - I had to keep a cold towel on my head just to stay cool. At least Apple kept us well-fed with amazing food throughout! I spent the rest of the week exploring San Jose, checking out Stanford's campus, visiting my company's HQ, and dropping by some smaller indie conferences in the area. I also got a chance to visit SwiftLang’s 10 year anniversary party happening a few blocks away from my hotel. On my penultimate day, my best friend (who now works in San Jose) and I rented a car and drove around Highway 1 from SF to Santa Cruz and back to San Jose. Easily one of the most scenic drives I've ever done. Always great to be back in the US.
July was mostly about fighting the terrible jetlag after the US trip. Everytime I fly west to east my body just stops thinking rationally for 2 weeks. Once I finally beat the jetlag, I headed to Bangalore for the WWDC recap session where I got to watch my friends share their experiences from the in-person event. We had a big dinner afterward which was a great chance to catch up with everyone. This month also marked my 3-year anniversary at LJI.
August kept me busy with my indie-app updates. I worked on new features for Neon, my color picker app, getting it ready for iOS 18. Added some cool stuff like a Mesh Gradient editor and a color mixer. I also built an AI transaction entry feature for Windfall. At work, I kicked off another ambitious project - possibly the biggest one yet.
September started nicely with a visit to my university after 2 years. The infrastructure changes were impressive - good to see the new students getting better facilities. Then came a funny coincidence - got called the coolest guy at work, and literally the next day I was burning up with a fever 😂. Started at 100 but shot up to 104. Things got serious when my Apple Watch warned me about a 120+ heart rate while I was asleep. Turns out, I just needed to chill out a little and drink a lot of water. I got all my indie apps ready for iOS 18 and launched their updates. My App Store earnings hit a nice milestone - crossed USD 5k in total sales and getting close to USD 6k, with every quarter this year beating the last. Also started the visa process for my first work trip (more on that coming up).
November brought an unexpected adventure - a last-minute work trip to South Africa. Got my visa just two days before flying to Cape Town, cutting it really close. The journey was long - Chennai to Doha to Johannesburg to Cape Town, taking over 18 hours before I finally landed at night. I'll admit, I was nervous about Cape Town given everything you hear about crime rates. But man, was I wrong. Cape Town turned out to be one of the most beautiful cities I've seen - hills on one side, ocean on the other, and perfect summer weather. Even California's natural beauty doesn't come close. The work part went great too. The client meetings were so successful they reached out to their CXOs right after to praise my work (not flexing, just facts 😎). I managed to squeeze in some tourist time, checking out Boulder's Beach and Cape of Good Hope. Funny how things work - I was reluctant to go at first, but by the last day, I didn't want to leave. The best part? Indians won't need a visa from January 1st, so seriously, add Cape Town to your travel list.
December has been about wrapping up the year nicely. Finally meeting my Hyderabad office colleagues in person after working together for 3.5 years - pretty surreal. The weather's been playing along perfectly, with nights getting surprisingly cool, dropping below 23°C. And here I am, finishing up this year's review while thinking about what I want to tackle in 2025.
Favourite Songs of 2024:
- Birds of a Feather - Billie Eilish
- Million Dollar Baby - Tommy Richman
- Espresso - Sabrina Carpenter
- Shudder - Jelani Aryeh
- Run your Mouth - The Marias
- Best Part - H.E.R
- About you - The 1975