It’s been a really long year. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but I’m glad I’ve made it through. I’m looking forward to the next year, and I hope it’s a good one. For the people interested about what I’ve been up to this year, here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to.
Personal Life
2023 was a really exciting year for me, and my family:
- I became a father, and had a daughter named Ada.
- We moved to New Jersey and finally abandoned Manhattan and city lifestyle.
- We got our green cards, and we’re now permanent residents of the United States.
From Rust to Parenthood: Yagiz Nizipli’s Journey
Here’s an interview I did with Nearform (opens in a new tab) about my journey through Node.js, URL parsing, and personal growth.
Work
I’ve made an exciting career change and started working on developer tooling. This career change made me realize how much I love working on developer tooling, and how much I missed it. I’m really excited about the future, and I’m looking forward to working on developer tooling for the foreseeable future.
I’ve changed jobs this year. Until November 20, I was working at Noonlight (opens in a new tab) as a Senior Software Engineer. Currently I’m working at Sentry (opens in a new tab) working on error tracking & performance.
Open-Source
This is the year I’ve spent most of my time coding and contributing to Node.js. Every project I’ve worked on has been open source, and had the goal of improving the Node.js performance.
- Created 4108 commits (opens in a new tab) on Github.
- I’ve created 91 pull requests (opens in a new tab) for Node.js.
- I’ve introduced 3 new dependencies to Node.js core:
- Ada URL parser (opens in a new tab) , for fast parsing of URLs.
- simdutf (opens in a new tab) , for fast UTF-8 validation and transcoding.
- simdjson (opens in a new tab) , for fast JSON parsing.
- Wrote the fastest URL parser in the world Ada URL parser (opens in a new tab) with Daniel Lemire (opens in a new tab)
- Ada became the URL parser of Node.js and later got adopted by Cloudflare workers.
- Published a paper called Parsing millions of URLs per second (opens in a new tab) .
- Created an IDNA implementation for Ada, which got adopted by Clickhouse (opens in a new tab) . Ada IDNA (opens in a new tab) currently powers
domainToASCIIanddomainToUnicodein Node.js, and makesURLclass ICU-free.
- I spoke at NodeConf.eu (opens in a new tab) with Daniel Lemire (opens in a new tab) about the Ada URL parser.
- I became a voting member of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee (opens in a new tab) and OpenJS Foundation (opens in a new tab) .
- I became the Node.js Performance Strategic Initiative (opens in a new tab) champion of Node.js and later resigned (opens in a new tab) from my position.
- I attended and spoke at DevTools.fm podcast, OpenJS Collaborator summit, and gave a talk for NearForm’s Fireside chats.
- I started rewriting pnpm (opens in a new tab) in Rust called pacquet (opens in a new tab) and donated it to the pnpm organization.
- I joined the Web-Platform Tests (opens in a new tab) and pnpm (opens in a new tab) organization.
- My JavaScript library fast-querystring (opens in a new tab) got adopted by several large organizations and governments such as Canada (opens in a new tab) , Oracle (opens in a new tab) , Cisco (opens in a new tab) and Inspire Flex (opens in a new tab) .
What’s next?
I’ve spent 2023 working on Node.js, and giving back to the community. I’m planning to continue working on Node.js, and developer tooling in 2024. Here are my new year’s resolutions:
Work
I’ll be focusing on improving my Rust skills and improve my expertise in developer tooling and error tracking. Specifically, I’ll be working on Sentry’s performance and error tracking products. My goal is to improve my knowledge on Rust and C++ performance. I’ll try to learn more and apply my findings to Sentry’s performance and error tracking products.
Open-Source
2023 was a year of ups and downs. Especially in the open-source world. I’ve spent this year creating an initiative and influence over the ecosystem to improve Node.js performance. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on this, and I’m glad I’ve made it through. I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished, but I’m also exhausted.
I think it’s time for me to take a step back from Node.js performance and focus on other things. I’ll continue my work on Node.js Technical Steering Committee, but I’ll take less responsibility starting by finding a new chair for the Node.js performance team (opens in a new tab) bi-weekly meetings.
On top of that, I’ll be working on a high-performance project similar to Ada URL (opens in a new tab) with Daniel Lemire (opens in a new tab) .
Thank you
I’d like to thank Matteo Collina, James Snell, Daniel Lemire, Anna Henningsen, and the entire Node.js community for their support and guidance. I’d also like to thank my wife for her support and patience. And most importantly, I’d like to thank my daughter Ada for being the best thing that happened to me in 2023.