We're already halfway through 2025! Let's chat about life lately. • Lucky Snail

Hi everyone, I’m luckySnail. Today I glanced at the calendar and realized it’s already June — half of 2025 is gone! That scared me into quickly checking the goals I set at the beginning of the year, and I feel like I’m still moving forward along the planned path. There’s occasional anxiety, occasional slacking off, occasional gloominess, but I haven’t given up. I’m really grateful to myself for this past half year. I believe that even years from now when I look back, 2025 will be an unforgettable year. Below I’d like to share my experiences and reflections from these six months — hope they help you too.

If I were to give the first half of the year some keywords:

Persistence
Confidence
Peace

A Fulfilling Life

In the past six months, after some reflection, I left the company I’d worked at for two years and joined a new company building AI products. Under the impact of AI, I systematically learned Node.js and its upper-layer framework Nest.js, and through practice I developed a full-stack project: svg show (a tool site for creating beautiful images with SVG). I also tried marketing through self-media and open-source communities, achieving my first product with 1K+ users. Aside from doing self-media for the product, I also actively shared some observations and thoughts about my work and life. The main platforms I maintain are: WeChat Official Account, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book); occasionally I also post on Douyin and Bilibili — really “dabbling in things outside my main lane.” These six months have also integrated AI deeply into every aspect of my daily life, whether it’s coding at work, self-media creation, or searching in daily life. Lately I’ve even been trying to develop my first browser extension using Vibe Coding. Oh, and during these six months I also spent a lot of time writing resumes, submitting them, optimizing them, and going through interviews — these things were indeed tough for me!

In my personal life, I moved to a new place where there’s more of a lively, everyday atmosphere, the bike lanes on the street are wider! And there are fewer traffic cops!

During the May Day holiday, I went back to visit my elderly grandparents and spent three days with them. They were very happy, and so was I. I also found an old photo album from my childhood and saw my younger self.

I listened to Liang Bo’s fourth album Spirit (精气神), and I really love the lyrics in “Escape the World” (避世离俗): “Child, if someone says you are lonely, don’t hesitate — go your own way, be your own master.”

I visited Fudan University — top universities really are different! The library and teaching buildings are truly magnificent.

I read new books: technical ones — A Philosophy of Software Design, Second Edition and You Don’t Know JS (Up & Going, Scope & Closures); cognitive ones — Do Hard Things That Are Right.

I exercised a few times — the benefits of working out are clearly noticeable, but there’s always something stopping me (bushi).

I played several seasons of Teamfight Tactics (Golden Spatula) and reached Master every season! Lately I’ve been watching the Korean drama When Life Gives You Tangerines (苦尽甘来遇见你) — it’s really good! And what’s your life’s lifeboat?

Gains

After going through so much, there are definitely some gains and insights!

AI

AI tools I’m currently using:

ChatHub: Free unlimited annual membership from my company 😭, supports all major LLMs — really useful, highly recommend.
Gemini: Student discount until 2026, feels dumber now! I mainly use it for research — its Research feature is really powerful.
Claude.ai: Used for drawing SVGs, flowcharts, web page generation, etc.
ChatGPT: Image creation, used for illustrations on my WeChat Official Account — works great!
Cursor: The only tool I pay for myself, my daily essential AI coding tool. Even though I recently also paid for Trae, Cursor is still in a league of its own.
DeepSeek: Used for translation — it’s the most powerful model for English-to-Chinese translation, bar none. I recently compared it with other models, and none of them beat DeepSeek.

If you have any other useful AI tools that boost your productivity, feel free to share 👏

Job Hunting Journey

In 2025, the programming industry is still mired in involution and layoffs. Though it might be slightly better than 2024? For an ordinary person like me with an unimpressive education background, choosing to switch jobs at this time is hell mode! But I have to thank my company and myself — my two years at the previous company helped me improve a lot, laying the foundation for me to ace interviews and get offers!

For preparing resumes and interviews, I think the following resources are enough:

In addition to the above, I also want to add: don’t force everything onto one page just for the sake of one page. If you have two projects and two job experiences, one page is definitely a stretch! Go for two pages! For a front-end resume, it’s not just about the content — layout also reflects your aesthetic sense. Also, never include things that aren’t good, don’t let what should be a plus become a minus.

Resume submission channels:

Boss Zhipin
Internal referrals
Company career portals
Communities, friends, group chats, etc.

For interviews, I think the best approach is to first identify 100 possible questions based on your resume (AI can help), then organize answers, review them, do mock interviews with someone, and finally go to the real interview. This increases your pass rate. One thing I especially want to share: if you encounter a difficult problem you can’t solve in an interview, make sure to pivot the conversation to your strengths — because our mission is to show the best version of yourself within one hour, hide your weaknesses, and ultimately pass the interview and get the offer!

Full-Stack Attempts

By developing a full-stack project, I gained a basic understanding of the backend, became better at front-end/back-end collaboration, and can think more comprehensively and propose solutions systematically. Beyond technical growth, from a product perspective, I’ve become much clearer that technology exists to create better products and solve real-world problems. At the same time, I carefully calculated the numbers — the “SVG Show” product I developed is not making money; it’s actually losing money. So don’t be reckless and build your own product unless you have to. If you really plan to make a product, the first step is absolutely not writing code — it’s marketing and finding your first paying customers, then calculating revenue — at least don’t lose money.

Another deep insight: in the AI era, when technology is no longer valuable, business and users are the moat. As the saying goes, “every industry is a different mountain.” As long as you go deep in a niche area and then look for productizable services, find and serve your customers through marketing. At work, while improving our tech skills, we also need to understand the company’s business — how the company makes money from customers. This is very important.

Self-Media

If I had to pick the happiest thing in these six months, it’s that I started trying self-media! Whether it’s text, images, or video, I’ve given them all a shot. And I feel the results are quite satisfying. I’ll continue updating my self-media, but I won’t do it deliberately — instead I’ll share thoughts about life and work. I’ll make sure to focus my energy on the technical skills and work quality that need the most improvement right now. Finally, I want to share a quote I see every time I log into my WeChat Official Account: “Every small individual has their own brand.” If you want to start self-media too, do it now!

New Life

I feel deeply passionate about my current life. Every day I feel there isn’t enough time, and I still have an obsession with code and programming. I love my current job and life, and I’m confident I can achieve WLB (Work Life Balance). Even when I get a bit tired, two rounds of Teamfight Tactics (Golden Spatula) revive me!

I also want to share my (an ordinary person’s) perspective on risk. Nobody likes risk, but every choice you make is accepting different risks. I think when you’re young, within the range of risk you can afford, you should choose the riskier option. If you lose, you don’t really lose much — but if you win, you gain a lot!

Improvements

Looking back on the first half of the year, I realize there are many areas where I need to improve:

Exercise: My current company has a free gym and badminton court. I must find a way to increase work efficiency and carve out time to work out.
Learning: I bought a Frontend Masters membership at the start of the year and haven’t studied with it yet — it’s about to expire!
Work: Better understand the current business, empower the business from the technical side, and increase product revenue.
Life: Spend more time with family. Looking back from decades in the future, they are the most important.

Hope I can make it happen!

Conclusion

Know your chips, be clear about what you truly want, and then enjoy the game of life to the fullest!