writing

2017 Year in Review2017 年总结

2017-12-31 · Personal essays

Translated from Chinese — .

Editorial note: personal reflections are preserved; comments about others and incidental details have been shortened.

On this page

• Plan Completion
• Habits Formed
• Work Summary
• Looking Ahead to 2018
• What I Pursue

Just like that, 2017 is over. Every year is an important year, and this year was the first full year (calendar year, January to December) I worked at Alibaba (Ant Financial). The novelty and discomfort I wrote about in last year’s review have all become routine and familiar by now.

Plan Completion

Last year’s plan is here. If I’m lenient with myself, the completion can be called a barely-passing grade. Goals I didn’t achieve:

1. Didn’t travel abroad with my family. (Various reasons — not enough vacation days — and in the end I didn’t go.)
2. Didn’t join a franchise. (Later I thought I was too naive, or didn’t dare to break out.)
3. Couldn’t communicate normally in spoken English. (Still didn’t put in enough time.)
4. Write a 200-page book. (I felt I still hadn’t accumulated enough.)

What I achieved or did:

1. The rental can be considered a calm, deliberate search. Very close to the kindergarten.
2. Stocks, through Alibaba and JD stocks, exceeded 1000 RMB. (Still at a super-beginner stage; the stock rise was purely due to the macro environment.)
3. Read a big pile of finance books.
4. Attended two company financial management events.
5. Read some books about franchises. (Counts as getting acquainted, I guess.)
6. Spoken English improved significantly; still keeping up with practice on Liulishuo and Youdao Speaking. (Just haven’t broken through the final stage yet.)
7. Developed the first beta version of MachOExplorer. (With very limited working time, developed it on and off; most of the code was written between midnight and 2 AM.)
8. Developed AppleTrace to solve the problem of analyzing app performance at work, but couldn’t squeeze out time at work to develop it.
9. One blog post per month — basically just enough to fill the quota, but the quality was clearly worse than last year. (Still didn’t make the blog a priority.)
10. AzeriaLab’s arm exploitation practice. (Returning to security — this is where my interest lies.)
11. The direction of study leaned mostly toward low-level stuff; read some books and papers, mostly summarized in these two places, iosre and papers. (On this I didn’t stray off course.)
12. Quite a lot of self-driving trips in and around Beijing; played through all the family-friendly places.
13. Initial pwnable.kr practice. (As a closing note, here’s a picture.)

Habits Formed

1. This year I developed a more effective note-taking habit. Here’s a summary of my note-taking scheme:

    1. OneNote笔记、日记、博客草稿。
    2. Pocket 乱七八糟的网页、各类感觉不错但没时间或者以后永远不看的文章。
    3. Evernote 符合兴趣的，已经、正在或一定会看的好文章或资料，一定加标签。
    4. MWeb 写博客、电子书。
    5. dynalist.io 思维整理。
   

2. Quit Honor of Kings by reducing opportunities to play.
3. Wake up at 7:20, sleep before 1 AM. (7 hours of sleep basically guaranteed, but sometimes 7 hours feels not enough.)

Work Summary

A full year of work at Ant let me feel the power of collaboration. Developing Alipay mini-programs involved hundreds of people; such a huge project going from zero to release relied on the effort of every link in the chain. Following Alipay App’s performance for a whole year also gave me a deeper understanding of future directions. Sweet, sour, bitter, spicy — hard to put into words (and not really appropriate to publish publicly) — but plenty of growth and gains too.

Looking Ahead to 2018

1. Finish pwnable.kr — not for speed, but for thorough understanding.
2. The jailbreak principles of iOS 6/7/8/9/10/11, summarized in multiple blog posts.
3. Run at the gym, 4 times a week.
4. Performance-oriented programming — integrate my understanding of performance and security into the Tokamak library (currently still a private repo).
5. Polish MachOExplorer, implement Windows support, and reach the goal of fully replacing MachOView.
6. Pair AppleTrace with frida to enhance the trace experience.
7. Finish the 200-page book before July 1 (free open-source or published — to be decided depending on the finished quality).
8. Travel abroad with the family once.
9. Add more images to blog posts; get hands-on with Sketch.
10. Have the blog cover more low-level principles and discoveries.
11. Achieve normal communication in spoken English.

What I Pursue

Thinking about it, what exactly have I been pursuing all along? What I pursue is “doing more meaningful things.” When tangled, miscellaneous matters arrive and the soul can’t be replenished, perhaps that drives evolution. Yet this seems to be a cycle too. Life/work is just like this — constantly pursuing, constantly seeking, constantly moving forward.

整理说明：保留当年的个人复盘，精简了涉及他人的评价与无关细节。

文章目录

• 计划完成
• 习惯养成
• 工作总结
• 展望2018
• 我的追求

转眼2017年过去了，每年都是很重要的一年，这一年我在阿里（蚂蚁金服）第一次工作了完整的一年（自然年1月到12月）。曾经去年总结的各种新鲜与不适应也都习以为常和适应了。

计划完成

去年的计划在这里， 对自己宽松一点的话，完成情况可谓是勉强及格吧。没有实现的目标有：

1. 没有和家人一起出国旅游。（各种理由，假期不够啊，最终还是没去）
2. 没有加盟一家店。（后来认为还是太天真，或者不敢打破）
3. 英语口语不能正常交流。（投入时间还是不够）
4. 写一本200页的书。（认为自己积累还是不够）

实现了或者做了什么：

1. 租房可认为是冷静寻找了。距离幼儿园很近。
2. 股票通过阿里和京东的股票超过了1000RMB。（还是处于超级入门阶段，股票上涨纯属大环境原因）
3. 阅读了一大堆财务类的书籍。
4. 参加了两次公司的理财类活动。
5. 阅读了一些加盟店的书籍。（算作了解吧）
6. 英语口语有较大提升，流利说及有道口语都还在坚持练习。（只是还没有突破最后的阶段）
7. 开发了MachOExplorer第一个测试版本。（在工作时间很有限的情况下，断断续续开发，大量代码都是凌晨0点到2点之间写的）
8. 开发了AppleTrace 为了解决工作中分析App性能的问题，但工作中又挤不出时间来开发。
9. 每月一篇博客，基本凑数凑够了，但质量明显不如去年。（还是没有把重点放在博客上）
10. AzeriaLab 的arm exploitation练习（重归安全，这是我的兴趣所在）
11. 学习的方向基本偏向底层，看了一些书和paper，基本汇总在这两个地方，iosre和papers。（这点还是没走偏）
12. 北京及周边的自驾游还是比较多，适合家庭玩的地方都玩了一遍。
13. pwnable.kr初步练习（作为结尾，放张图了）

习惯养成

1. 今年养成了更有效的笔记习惯，汇总下我的笔记方案：

    1. OneNote笔记、日记、博客草稿。
    2. Pocket 乱七八糟的网页、各类感觉不错但没时间或者以后永远不看的文章。
    3. Evernote 符合兴趣的，已经、正在或一定会看的好文章或资料，一定加标签。
    4. MWeb 写博客、电子书。
    5. dynalist.io 思维整理。
   

2. 通过减少接触和游玩的机会，戒掉了王者荣耀。
3. 7点20起床，晚1点前睡觉。（7小时睡眠基本保证，但有时觉得7小时不够）

工作总结

一整年的蚂蚁工作，让我体会到了协作的力量，支付宝小程序的开发涉及上百人，如此庞大的工程从零到发布，少不了每个环节的努力。跟进了一整年支付宝App的性能，也让我对未来的方向有更深入的认识。酸甜苦辣，一言难尽（也不太适宜公开发表），成长和收获也是多多。

展望2018

1. 完成pwnable.kr，不求速度，求理解透彻。
2. iOS 6/7/8/9/10/11 的越狱原理，写多篇博客总结。
3. 健身房跑步，每周4次。
4. 面向性能编程，把我对性能及安全的理解融入Tokamak（目前还是私有库）这个库中。
5. 完善MachOExplorer，实现Windows支持，并达到完全取代MachOView的目的。
6. AppleTrace搭配frida，增强trace体验。
7. 7月1日之前完成200页的书（免费开源或者出版视完成质量再做决定）
8. 家庭出国旅游一次。
9. 写博客多配图，上手Sketch。
10. 博客多涉及底层原理、发现。
11. 英语口语实现正常交流。

我的追求

想想一直以来我到底是在追求什么？追求的是“做更有意义的事情”，当繁杂的事情来临，而心灵又无法得到弥补，或许就会推动进化。然而似乎这又是一个循环。生活/工作本身就是这样，不断追求，不断求索，不断前进。