This is something I usually try to write in early January but here it is March already and I'm finally feeling up to it. It's been a rough winter and I've not been motivated to write or create much content, but I'm starting to come around. Getting this done will hopefully let me knock out a bunch of other things I have in the queue.

So, without further preamble, let's take a look back at 2022.

Oh and here are some past articles you might enjoy as well:

• My 2017 Year in Review
• My 2018 Year in Review
• My 2019 Year in Review
• My 2020 Year in Review
• My 2021 Year in Review
• My Year in Review Post Checklist

Blogging

Last year I added 26 articles to my blog (about 11 fewer than in 2021). On average I published about 1 every 2 weeks, but in actuality I was pretty active early in the year and then slowed down quite a bit later on. I got a bit burnt out last year and am still dealing with that.

I'd really like to publish 50 articles in 2022.

My goal was 50, but I barely got to half that. We'll see what 2023 holds. I think I can aim for at least 26 again, but it's already March and I'm just getting around to publishing this review of last year, so who knows.

Google Analytics reports I had 749,902 page views in 2022. That's down from 842,609 in 2021, about an 11% drop. Probably a consequence of writing fewer articles. I also didn't set up most of my more recent articles in SmarterQueue, which periodically promotes them to my twitter followers, so that probably also didn't help.

New Articles

Honestly none of my 2022 articles had major traction. You can see some small traffic spikes in the graph above, but only two of the 2022 posts made it into the year's top 10 most popular article list (both published in January - see below).

You can browse through all of my (recent or not) articles here.

Most Popular Articles

Which brings me to articles. Google Analytics is great for identifying one’s most popular content. Often it’s not what you might think, expect, or hope for, though. For example, I mostly focus on code quality topics, domain-driven design, object-oriented principles, testing, etc. My top posts… don’t always reflect that though:

1. Solved - An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden (35k impressions)
2. The More You Know The More You Realize You Don’t Know (30k impressions)
3. Clean Architecture in ASP.NET Core (29k impressions)
4. Force Nuget to Reinstall Packages Without Updating (25k impressions)
5. Add Images Easily to GitHub (15k impressions)
6. SQL Server Error User Group or Role Already Exists (13k impressions)
7. Why Use DateTimeOffset (10k impressions)
8. Generate SSH RSA Key Pairs on Windows with WSL (10k impressions)
9. Configure Visual Studio to Name Private Fields with Underscore (10k impressions)
10. What is the difference between a DTO and a POCO or POJO (9k impressions)

Currently I have about 1644 blog posts on this site. That's just a count of all the files in my blog folder now that I've moved to using markdown and Gatsby.

I'm going to keep shooting for 1 million page views in a year (specifically, in 2023).

I've had this goal for a couple of years now and have obviously thus far fallen short. Last year slipped the wrong direction and this year I'm already behind on publishing new content. But we'll stick with the goal even if it's unlikely to happen this year (so far through March 9th I'm at 124k page views - I need to average 3k/day for the rest of the year to hit this goal).

Weekly Dev Tips Podcast Stats

I have a podcast, Weekly Dev Tips (which is the same name as my emailed newsletter that goes out every Wednesday). You can find it on the usual podcasting apps, its website, and also on YouTube.

I've been pretty burnt out on the podcast during the pandemic. Last year I only published one new episode, on Blogging with Andrew Lock.

I didn't publish any new episodes in 2022. I do have one I recorded a while ago that I should get around to publishing...

That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to the existing shows. Most of them are meant to be evergreen content that you would listen to in order, with a lot of great stuff packed into the first couple dozen episodes.

Definitely give them a listen and subscribe, and if I get back to adding more you'll get notified.

Weekly Dev Tips Mailing List

Unlike the podcast, I rarely miss sending out an email tip on Wednesdays (well, until recently).

I'm still just under 4000 subscribers. You can sign up here, if you’re interested.

Goal for 2023: 4,000+ subscribers. Current growth rate should make that very attainable.

Social Media Stats

It can be difficult to get this information after the fact, so here are my stats for various social media things as of March 2023.

• Twitter.com/ardalis: 22,806 followers. 52.6k tweets sent (ever).
• YouTube.com/ardalis: 4.76k subscribers. 100 videos. 40k views in 2021, about a 19% drop from 2020.
• YouTube.com/weeklydevtips: 971 subs ; 76 videos. 3,565 views (0% increase).
• Twitch.tv/ardalis: 2.1k followers; 0 subscribers. Inactive since 2021.
• GitHub.com/ardalis: 6.7k followers; 246 repositories, 65 Stars.
  • CleanArchitecture repo: 12.2k stars; 2.2k forks
  • GuardClauses repo: 2.4k stars; 233 forks
  • ApiEndpoints repo: 2.5k stars; 173 forks
  • SmartEnum repo: 1.7k stars; 137 forks
  • Specification repo: 1.3k stars; 194 forks
  • 1,574 contributions in last year (everywhere)
• Instagram.com/ardalis_steve: 143 posts; 498 followers.

Actually joined TikTok (inspired by Hanselman) but someone got my username (the horror!) so I'm @ardalis0 there. No content, though...

Publications

In 2022 (or early 2023), I published the following books and courses:

Updated my architecture eBook for .NET 7: Architecting Modern Web Applications with ASP.NET Core and Microsoft Azure

Updated my book on porting from .NET to .NET Core/.NET 5 to .NET 7.

My Pluralsight Courses (View All)

I published 1 new course last year (23 total).

• ASP.NET Core 6 Web API: Best Practices

This year I plan to update some of my SOLID and Refactoring content.

Speaking

I spoke at a few conferences last year, including some in person events:

• Hampton Roads User Group (virtual) (April 2022)
• Stir Trek (May 2022)
• Louisville .NET Meetup (June 2022)
• dotnetconf 2022 (virtual) (November 2022)
• DevIntersection (virtual) (December 2022)

My talks and workshops often focused on domain driven design, clean architecture, cloud design patterns, and ASP.NET Core. Contact me if you're interested in private presentations for your team or company.

Travel

Most of the rest of this is less interesting if you just follow me for technical content. You've been warned.

We did some camping (with travel trailer) in 2022. In the spring we went south to Congaree National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains. In the summer went north to upper peninsula Michigan and places like Marquette, Houghton, McLain State Park, and Madeline Island and Bayfield, WI. We also made it to the beach for our annual family trip and actually flew to Orlando for Disney later in the year. My last trip was to Vegas for DevIntersection. Not nearly as much air travel as a typical year pre-pandemic, but we got out a bit.

Fitbit

You can get annual stats from Fitbit in the Activities tab.

2022:

• 2.6M total steps counted (down 300k)
• 8566 floors (up 2600)
• 1200 miles (down 140 or so)

I managed to play outdoor and indoor soccer, but was fighting injuries much of the time. My weight's been creeping up over the last few years. In 2022 it started at 222 and got as low as 218 but the year ended at 228, which is my all time high. The end of the year was pretty rough - my father passed away the day after Christmas.

You can see that the pandemic years weren't great for my weight. I've started logging everything I eat (as of 1 March 2023) and doing weight training, so hopefully this time next year I'll be much more fit (and either lighter or at least leaner).

Work Environment and Gear

I try to keep my current list of gear and tools used up to date. Not much in the way of new gear. I got a ring light and a little teleprompter that I haven't really used, yet, but plan on using for some upcoming YouTube videos. Likewise I upgraded my primary recording mic to a Blue Yeti.

That was about it for 2022. No new laptops or desktops.

Work Stuff

NimblePros

NimblePros has been doing well. We hired 3 people in 2022 (and 2 more in 2023 so far). We'll probably add a couple more before 2023 is over, but we don't want to grow too big or too quickly. We're pretty happy with the crew we have and the culture we've developed. If you're looking for help migrating to the latest version of .NET and/or to the cloud, or if you need help leveraging DDD and/or distributed architecture, give NimblePros a call (or, preferably, email).

devBetter

If you don't know it, devBetter is a group coaching program that promises to accelerate developer careers. It's continued to grow and has become a vibrant community. I enjoy our group coaching calls every week, and several of the hires NimblePros have made came from the devBetter community. It's a great way to help yourself and others.

That’s It

Thanks for reading this far. This post is mostly for my own reference, but maybe you found it interesting or useful.

If you want to write your own year in review blog post, I wrote a checklist here. It's probably longer than most people will want but you can just pick and choose what works for you.

Good luck this year and beyond!