George recently
threw down the gauntlet to me and Jason and a few other folks, to challenge ourselves and stretch beyond our comfort zone to become better developers. So if I properly understand this latest blog frenzy, I'm supposed to pick four things that I'm going to do in order to become a better developer. I'm supposed to publish those four things in my blog, so that I'll be accountable for them.
(ok seriously, if I lived up to even HALF the crap I've promised in this blog over the years... you wouldn't be challenging me to be a better developer, you'd be bowing at my feet... but I digress.)
so here's my four things that I'm gonna claim to try and do over the next 6 months to be a better developer.
1. I'm gonna finish reading at least 1 tech book. You may laugh, but I have hundreds of "developer" books that I have bought, borrowed or received over the years... I have gazed longingly at the covers of all of them, skimmed a few chapters in most of them, actually sat down and read past the intro on a few of them, and completely finished almost none of them.
(I think it was Hanselman that said you have to make your goals attainable. Maybe it was Jesus, but I'm pretty sure it was Hanselman. Or that guy who sweats to the oldies... I don't remember, either way it's good advice.)
By only promising to finish one book (preferably one I've already started) I have a pretty good chance of meeting my goal. If I read TWO books, I've exceeded my goals by 100%. FANTASTIC. I'm feeling optimistic already.
2. I'm going to embrace a new technology. Preferably one that doesn't bore me to death, or frustrate me beyond belief. That pretty much rules out BI and
XNA, respectively. I'm thinking maybe MOSS or Java.
(I briefly considered Silverlight, but if one more person starts regurgitating "Silverlight Cream" on GWB I'm afraid the servers might just implode in a fit of merciful suicide. Save the servers, save the world. Seriously.)
3. I'm going to finish writing the POS (point of sale, thank you very much) software for Reality Check. I'm gonna finish designing it, coding it, testing it and I'm gonna implement it, and it's gonna roxor ur soxors. seriously.
(I actually have some really cool ideas for this system, and they involve some concepts I've never really explored before, so I'm pretty excited about the non-suckitude of this project. Unless I don't finish it, in which case it's garbage.)
4. I'm going to write a WoW UI mod. Something really cool, that makes all the other WoW UI mods bow before me.
(not really, but I figure if I mention WoW mods a few more times, I'll be exposing my blog to a whole new category of googlers/readers... you know, all those guys that search for WoW mods or gold. Hmm, maybe I should think this one through better.)
4a. Actually, I'm going to do more training. A lot more training. As in, training others. I enjoy it, I learn from it every time I do it. Oh yeah, and I happen to be damn good at it. I want to start doing some training on cutting edge stuff, like Silverlight (not really) or some of the newer MS technologies. See #2.
I'm not sure any of these will actually make me a better developer, and I'm not even sure I will complete more than one or two things from this list, but maybe if I do it will give George something else besides my tattoos to refer to in his blog posts.
I guess, if nothing else, we can always whip em out and compare MVPness size. Come to think of it, I think Jason trumps us both since he's a Microsoft DE now. Damn... another victory snatched away by fate's cruel hand.