It's a new year so it's time to make some more promises to myself which
I'll likely break in a few weeks. This time I thought it would help if
I wrote them up in public so I'd be better motivated to actually
achieve them.
Learn a New Programming Language: When I was in school, I
got to explore a new programming language every couple of months. I
used C, C++, Java, Smalltalk, JavaScript and Lisp while in school. In
recent years I've been programming exclusively in C# although I've
started toying with JavaScript again due to the AJAX hype. I've decided
that I want to learn a dynamic programming language like Python or
Ruby. Given that the .NET Framework now has
IronPython, I suspect Python is what I'll end up picking up. Since we plan to greatly improve the plugin story for RSS Bandit, I may get some practical experience by building new plugins for RSS Bandit using IronPython.
Write More Articles: Looking back on various articles I've written
it's clear that since joining MSN and getting a new girlfriend my
output has reduced. I only wrote two articles last year compared to a
minimum of five or six in previous years. I've already tried to start
on the right foot by promising an article on my Seattle Movie Finder page for the O'Reilly Network. My big goal is to update my C# From a Java Developer's Perspective
article to account for Whidbey (C# 2.0) and Tiger (Java 5.0). The
article still gets thousands of hits a month even though its over four
years old.
Come Up With New Career Goals: When I was in school, my dream was to become a well-known technology guru like Don Box or Scott Meyers
then get paid consulting gigs to be the hero that comes in to fix
peoples problems and tell them how to build their software. Since then,
I've seen a lot of the people who I once idolized end up working in the
b0rg cube. In conversations with Don Box, he's mentioned that the life
isn't as glamorous as I assumed.
It's coming on my fourth year at Microsoft and I'm not clear what my long
term career goals are anymore. I love my current job; I get the build
cool stuff that impacts millions of people and work with a bunch of
smart people. However I don't have a clear idea of where this leads. In
recent months I've gotten pings from recruiters from AMZN and GOOG,
which I've discounted but the funny thing is if I was looking to leave
I probably couldn't articulate what I was looking for to a recruiter.
The only thing I am sure of is that I'm not going to get my MBA after
all. My main motivation for getting it was "to do it now before it got
too late" but that's enough of a motivator to put in the effort since I
don't know what I'd do with it once I got it.
It's going to be time for my mid-year review and discussion with my
boss in a couple of weeks. I hope I have a clearer idea where I want to
go by then.
Piss of Less People with my Writing:
Whatever. I've already gotten two angry emails from different folks at
work about stuff I've written online and it isn't even the first week of the year. Maybe next year. ;)