Thursday, January 5, 2012

Goals 2011 Review

Well, it's Goals Review time again! I had 5 stated goals for 2011...

2011 Goal 1: Read 5 software development related books

I was a little less ambitious with books in 2011 but that proved to be unnecessary. I joined a book club and that helped to push my total to 11:

The Design of Everyday Things - Donald Norman

Driving Technical Change - Terrence Ryan

Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design - Donald C. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum - Alan Cooper

Java: The Good Parts - Jim Waldo

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning - Andy Hunt

The Psychology of Computer Programming - Gerald M. Weinberg

Rest In Practice - Jim Webber, Savas Parastatidis, Ian Robinson

The Soul Of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

Spring In Action, Third Edition - Craig Walls

Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

2011 Goal 2: Convert my "broken toy" library app to use Hibernate and Spring

Yes. I created 2 new projects: 1 based on Hibernate, and another based on Spring and Hibernate. I enjoyed learning about the abstractions in these frameworks and I especially enjoyed removing much of the boilerplate/plumbing code I previously wrote. I feel like I've just scratched the surface though, especially as I read the Spring In Action book - each chapter gave me new implementation ideas.

2011 Goal 3: Create a new "broken toy" app to help me keep track of the anniversaries and birthdays of my family and friends

Nope. This will have to be carried forward into 2012.

2011 Goal 4: Write two blog posts a month

Looks like I had a lot to say in 2011, as I created 61 posts! That's almost double my total from 2010. A couple of my favorites:

2011 Goal 5: Take some sort of multi-day software development training

Yes. I took the Core Spring course, and attended the Uber Conference.

One of my unwritten goals for 2011 was to continue pursuing a career that feeds my passion for problem solving, and I was able to further that goal by starting a new developer position.

I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish in 2011.