2010. Wow. 2009 came and went pretty quickly. I left Multimedia Games and joined Bioware. I’ve had five different bosses. I have actively worked with two new languages and continued to hone my craft with a few others. However, that’s the past. It’s time to look forward, time to set some goals. Hopefully by sharing I can encourage people to do the same.

  1. Read more.
    There is a wealth of information out there. Just try searching Google for programming blogs or Amazon.com for programming books and you will find a ton of information. (Seriously, I weighed it.) Well, this year I want to make some headway into that. I actually own a bookshelf filled with programming books, most of which I’ve only glossed through.
    This year, I will read a programming book every four months. I think three books in a year is quite conservative, but I know if I set goals that are too ambitious than I will become encumbered and fail. I can always up the ante next year!
    I will also try to follow ten good blogs by the end of March. I want to make this deadline a little earlier, otherwise I won’t reap the benefits by the year’s end. The way I see it, this is reading one or two posts a day.
  2. Learn a new language.
    A new language is just another tool in the toolbox. As a game programmer, I have been surprised to be using two new languages (C# and Python). Come January, I know I will see more. In fact, I know two projects I am working on and I might need to be able to hack my way through some Erlang and some Perl. Learning the syntax of a new language will not only help me set a solid foundation in said language, but also in the paradigms and design patterns involved. It couldn’t hurt to know more about Java.
    This year I will try to solidify my Python and learn Perl. I have been hacking through some python scripts at work, but I wouldn’t say I’m confident in writing Python yet. Also, I need to be able to start editing / writing some Perl scripts, so I should probably get some solid knowledge. By the years end I will have read and coded a solution using Python and a solution using Perl.
  3. Be an architect and not just a programmer.
    This is a piece of advice that a former boss gave me. “Be an architect and not just a programmer,” he said. This is solid advice. It differentiates between someone who designs systems and someone who writes them. Thinking like an architect means looking for the healthy, long-term solution to a problem. It means keeping in mind maintainability and creating systems that survive. It means less bugs, less cruft. It’s looking for the root cause of a null pointer instead of a check for NULL or an assert.
    I do not have a solid plan for this one. It is about changing the way you approach a problem. It is spending your time wisely and looking beyond the cheap, top-level bug fix to create a better system overall. Perhaps I can promise to leave things in a better state than when I found them. Can I quantify how many systems? I don’t think so. I don’t want to force improvement where it’s not needed.

So there they are, my programming related New Year’s resolutions. Do you have any good ones? Share with me, I shared with you!

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