Hey everyone and happy December to all of you. Thank you so much for tuning into Developer Teahere at the end of the year. I'm so thankful for each and every one of you. Of course, as the end of the year rolls around, there's kind of a sense of reflection on the previous year and that's what we're going to be doing in today's episode. I just want to express my gratitude to you, the listeners. Not only am I thankful for each and every unique download that your mobile device or your laptop, whatever, is sending to the server, but I'm also grateful for the impact that each of you is going to have on the world. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a part of those stories, even if it's just a very small part. So thank you so much for subscribing, listening to the show. But more importantly, thank you so much for connecting to your career, not just for the sake of your salary, but because you care about your career. You care about what you're doing in the world. Thank you so much. My name is Jonathan Cutrell. You're listening to Developer Tea today's episode is very special because we're going to be taking a look back at 2017. We're not going to be doing clips from individual episodes. There's too many episodes to count. Too many good moments throughout the episodes to actually bring in clips from these episodes. But I do want to take a look back just to reflect and see where we've been. And perhaps a secondary reason is for those of you who haven't been listening to Developer Tea, maybe you will get a glimpse into what this shows about. But also maybe this show can act as a bookmark or reference to pointers where you may go back to previous episodes from 2017. Before we get started, I want to go ahead and talk about today's sponsor, Linode, including today's episode and the next episode, which is the final episode of 2017, Linode sponsored 52 episodes this year. That's one per week on average that Linode has sponsored. This is a huge, huge help to the show, to sustaining what we do with Developer Tea. So I'm so grateful that Linode has been a sponsor not only for this long, but also they've been a flexible sponsor. They look at the show as an investment. They look at this community as an investment. And they're willing to take a bet on this group of people, the people who are listening to the show. So Linode offers you a great deal for your money, first of all. They offer you a gigabyte of RAM for $5 a month. That's where their plans start. But that's such a small part of what Linode does. Linode also is involved in the community, not just by sponsoring podcasts, but by having developers on staff, by maintaining forums and IRC chat rooms and going above and beyond in their service. They have APIs to support pretty much all of their systems. Everything is based on an hourly rate. So you can spin up your servers. You can super power them for a few days and then bring them back down. Of course, you can balance your various Linode servers with the node balancer that Linode provides. There's tons of things that Linode does and there's no way that we can cover them all, even with as many episodes as Linode has sponsored. So I want you to go and check it out. I want you to take a look at what Linode has to offer. You can use this code Developer Tea 2017 until the end of 2017. If you are listening to this in 2018, which is very possible, then go and listen to another episode that Linode has sponsored and they're going to be sponsoring quite a few in the first quarter of next year to pick up the code for next year. By using the code Developer Tea 2017 or let's say Developer Tea 2018, for example, you can get $20 worth of credit and you can use that credit on any of Linode's service offerings. Go and check it out, spec'd out of them slash Linode. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. So I want to take a look back today, back to the beginning of 2017 and all the way through. And I just want to say thank you to all of the people who have made this show possible. First of all, I want to start with the spec family, Sarah Jackson, Brian Jackson, Brian Levin. These people have been absolutely key to the success of spec and therefore the success of Developer Teathis year. Sarah has been involved in every single episode of this show this year. She has edited every single episode. So huge props to Sarah for being such an integral part of what we do on the show. The second group of people that I want to think is all of the wonderful guests that I've had on this year. We've had 148 episodes this year, 148 episodes and out of that 148 episodes, we had 26 guests. Many of these guests did long enough interviews with me that they covered three episodes and pretty much all of them at least covered two episodes. So on average, that means that we had a guest show, an interview driven episode at least once a week on average, at least once a week. All right. So the people who we've talked to this year are West Boss, Caledizad, Lauren Cutrell, my wife, I'm a little biased on that particular episode. Lawrence Bradford, Dane Miller, Brad Frost, Ben Halpern, Chris Albin, Aaron Campbell, Aaron Erazzari, Alex Zube, and Grenhofer. Noah Labhart will Riley Marcus Morrison, Tom Ike, really enjoyed that one, the CTO of IDO. David Haffeld, Chris Ferdinandie, Kevin Kelly, Rachel neighbors, Mark Engelberg, Kristen Gallagher, Jason Vazquez, Gary Nussimbaum, Joshua Zeez, and Eleanor Graywall. Eleanor was the last episode before this one. Such an incredible list of people. I would love to go and talk about each one of these a little bit further, but certainly the spirit of the show is to keep things short. So we're not going to go into detail. Speaking of keeping things short, the average length of the episodes from this year are 24 minutes. Now, this show is supposed to be short. This is one of the goals going into 2018, is to try to fulfill that promise a little bit better. But part of the reason this show was 24 minutes on average this year is quite simply because we did have so many of those great interviews. The longest episode that we had was part three of the interview with Caledizad. It was an hour and 15 minutes long. And as it turns out, the episodes, the very first interview that I did with Caled, is actually the most popular episodes that we've ever had on Developer Tea. And the second round of interviews, so we have actually five episodes that we did with Caled. The second round of interviews is also very popular. So even though it is longer, I recommend if you haven't listened to those episodes that you can check them out. The shortest episode that we had this year actually was less than an episode. It was more like an announcement. That was our baby announcement. My wife Lauren and I that I mentioned earlier as a guest on the show, we had our son in June on June 13th. Liam Quinn-Cutrell was born. And so we've been very grateful to have him in our lives now over six months. And we've also changed our lives so much, so significantly. But we've been able to maintain this show and I'm very thankful for all that that has taught me the changes that have come with parenthood. So that was the shortest episode. It was about two minutes long. The second shortest episode that wasn't an announcement was the one super simple tactic to regain your time. You can find all these episodes that we're going to mention in today's episode on spec.fm. Of course, every episode of Developer Tea is available on spec.fm as well. Now not all the numbers have come in from the year. Of course, this episode is airing before the end of the year, so we're not going to get all the numbers in until the end of the year. But we can say that November was the biggest month ever in Developer Teahistory, the biggest month ever. November, we had a total of 299,306 listens. That's in a single month. We've had a month over month, we've had six straight months of greater listens than the previous month, starting back in June and ending in November. And December is shaping up to be a little bit lower than November, primarily because of the holidays, the few episodes that we skipped actually just before this episode. So December is not going to have quite as many downloads, but that's because there's not as many episodes to download. Now why am I sharing all this with you? Well, I want you to know that you're not alone in listening to this show, but I also want to thank you for being so consistent. We have a consistent group of people who listen to this show regularly. But beyond that, that group is growing. As we move into 2018, and as we'll discuss on the next episode of Developer Tea, we're going to talk about why I think that group is growing and where we're headed, what we're going to be doing on the show in 2018. But before we do that, I do want to take a second to recap some of the most popular episodes that were released this year. But before we dive into that list, I want to thank every sponsor who helps developers he do what we did this year. Linode, Fuse, Rollbar, Dolby, Codeship, Headspace, Pusher, WooCommerce, Flywheel, Flydart and School, and SwiftType. All of these companies have helped developers succeed in bringing you the content that we've been talking about in today's episode. And going into 2018, helping us build the show to the point that 2018 is already shaping up to be the best year the Developer Teahas ever seen. So let's talk about the most popular episodes. Now I want to start out by saying the first shot that I did at pulling these reports, I went with all of the listens that these episodes have accumulated. And of course, we don't take down episodes of Developer Tea, at least we don't do that on spec.fm. iTunes kind of regulates the number of episodes you're allowed to have based on the size of your feed or something that I'm not totally sure exactly how they make that call. But there's a limit on iTunes. But these episodes are out there perpetually, they stay out and alive. And I was looking at this top 10 episodes and I was noticing that the dates, the release dates on these top 10 are all very early in the year. So I have two lists. The first list is the total episode listens. And then the second list is actually the top episodes based on the first week of listens. Okay, so in other words, the interest that they gained immediately after being released. Okay, so let's go with the top 10. Number one, three questions you should be asking before you start a project. Three questions you should be asking before starting a project. Number two, this mistake could be killing your resume. Number three, async code and promises. Number four, feedback loops, the smallest unit of learning. Number five. Not so trivial. Things that can kill your focus. Number six, understand your environment. Number seven, finding your perspective. Number eight, prototyping a pilot project. Number nine, the Einstein long effect. And number ten, the anatomy of change. Now notice by the way that I did pull out those interview episodes because I want you to listen to all the interviews. The people that we have on the show are incredibly intelligent and worth listening to. So I didn't want to elevate one interview above any of the others. So these are episodes that are not interview episodes that we've included in the top 10. All right, so that was the total listens overall. Now I want to jump into the second list of episodes. These are the episodes that have spikes. The initial first week release, the number of listens for that episode was higher than the rest. So we actually have six of these. The other four, in the top 10 list, actually overlap with the first 10. So we have the remaining six. Number one, practical advice for changing your habits. It was a relatively recent episode actually. Number two, code review excuses. Number three was a three by three episode. Dialysis to avoid as a developer. Three fallacies to avoid as a developer. Number four, a simple shift in your email inbox strategy. Number five, another three by three, questions that could change the way you think. Three questions that could change the way you think. And number six, you can't control random. And we're going to put links to these episodes in the show notes so that if you're listening to this episode, maybe you like the people who listen to these episodes can find some value in them. But I wanted to outline this list, not to get you to go back and listen everything, but to give you an idea of what kind of content Developer Tealisteners enjoy. And why is it that we all connect to the similar types of content? You know, if you identify similar themes throughout these, we can see that learning has always been one of the most important parts of this show. Planning, understanding kind of the big picture, taking a step back. And the three questions you should be asking before starting a project. You know, all of these episodes, they share this kind of big picture perspective with a few anomalies. For example, the Async code and promises that was during our JavaScript January. Most of these episodes, they share these bigger themes. We've called them soft skills in the past. I don't really like that name because that kind of buckets, this very large group of skills that ultimately are kind of the difference between being a good programmer and being a great professional programmer. These are the things that everyone shares and that are going to carry throughout your career, no matter what kind of technology you're using, understanding these higher level things, that's going to be so important to your success, your long-term success and fulfillment as a developer. So I'm so thankful that the people who listen to the show have actually attached to that idea that it's very apparent to me that the people who listen to Developer Teathat download this show and listen to it on your way to work or at the gym or wherever you are when you listen to the short bits of information, they are connecting to the idea that it's not just about the code, that there's more to your job, there's more to your life than just creating software. The way that you create software, the people you create it for, your personal purpose, that is what this show is about. And it goes far beyond choosing the right technology, it goes far beyond making sure your code is clean and making sure you have tests and all of the other practices that we have as developers, that's not the only thing that we have in front of us. So if this resounds with you, then I highly encourage you to, first of all, listen to the next episode of Developer Tea. I'm going to lay out hopefully kind of what looks like the future for this show, specifically for 2018. We're going to talk in the next episode about the plan, the kind of big picture plan for 2018. And if this is resounding with you and if the next episode resounds with you, then I would encourage you to subscribe. Now this isn't just me asking for as many subscriptions as I can get. I certainly want the group of people who are listening to the show to get true value out of it. You're mindlessly listening, hoping to pick up a few tips here and there, then that's your choice. But truly, if you're listening to this, I would hope that you're listening to it mindfully and that you're engaging the content that you're carrying it into your workplace that you're actually willing to wrestle with the parts that are difficult and improve yourself. And go through that difficult process of behavior change and adopting new perspectives and challenging the way that you already think and growing and all of these things that are really quite difficult to do. I would hope that this show can be kind of a point of encouragement. And if you're not in that group, normally I would tell you that's okay that you don't need to subscribe. But at the end of the year and in this reflective time that everyone seems to share this looking back and then looking forward, it's kind of like a seam. If your career is a stitched fabric, then the end of one year in the beginning of the next is kind of like the seam that starts a new section. So I would encourage you if you don't identify with those things to ask yourself, why do you have room to grow? Do you have room to consider new ways of thinking about your career, about the practices that you adopt, but also about the people that you support, the people that you work with, the values that you portray in your own life, the values that you adopt both consciously and unconsciously. Are you going through your career just doing what everyone else tells you to do or are you originating it from yourself, from your own beliefs or from your own perspective? These are things that we like to talk about on the show and I would challenge you that if you haven't done that yet, there is a time in most people's lives where they choose to start going that direction. And unfortunately for many people, that time comes later than they had wished. That time of reflection, that time of thoughtful engagement in their careers, it comes later than they wished. Sometimes as a result of a life event or maybe a career shift that they weren't expecting, you have the opportunity, if you're listening to the show for whatever reason, you have the opportunity to engage these questions now without having to put it off, without waiting longer and then looking back with the potential of wishing you had done it earlier. So I encourage you, whether you do it with Developer Teaas kind of your background track or not, I encourage you to ask these questions of yourself to consider your career more deeply than ever before because you spend roughly a quarter of your time at work. And that includes the time that you sleep. If you remove your sleeping hours, then it's over a third of your life that you spend working, assuming you have a 40 hour week job, which for many of us is still not quite adequate to describe the amount of time that we work. So if your working takes up that much of your life and it doesn't mean anything to you, then perhaps it's time to ask why. Then you find a more fulfilling reality in your day-to-day work. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea, a recap of 2017. I hope that you are energized, that you're excited, that you've taken the time to look back on 2017 for yourself, but also, and as we'll cover in the next episode, that you look forward into 2018. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea, and for continuing to sponsor Developer Teainto 2018. Head over to spec.fm slash Linode. Make sure you use the code Developer Tea2017 at checkout for $20 worth of credit. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.