Moving into 2014

As per previous years I’m doing this as a retrospective on the previous year and trying to plan for the year to come

2013 goals

For 2013 I reduced the number of goals I had to give me a better chance of achieving them:

• Make better use of personal time
• Learn JavaScript
• Investigate Software Craftsmanship
• Code

How did I do?

Make better use of personal time

I didn’t do so well on this, I went “dark” for the majority of the year only managing 4 blog posts in the whole year.

I managed to read a few books and watch several training videos which but I spent a lot more time with my family so on balance I’m not so unhappy with this.

Learn JavaScript

For a large part of 2013 the work I was doing was JavaScript related so I feel that I’ve started to get a grip on JavaScript and all the books I read (and am still reading) and training videos I watched were JavaScript related.

Investigate Software Craftsmanship

I never got going on this goal at all, I never found the time.

Code

I hardly touched my own code this year, I managed to put together a repo on SPA authentication as I could not find any good resources on the net for this, and I also finally managed to put together a repo around EF Migrations to show the problem with using which I had wanted to do for a long time.

What else?

Job

This year I have been very busy with work and looking back on the year it is this, unsurprisingly, that impacted me the most. Whilst I may not have managed to touch my own code my work gave me the opportunity to spend time on JavaScript (nicely tying in with one of my goals for the year).

Community

This was the first year for the last couple of years that I didn’t give any presentations at all. Unfortunately I missed the inaugural DDD EA but I did manage to attend DDD North 3 which was excellent.

I also attended Progressive .Net Tutorials and DDD Exchange both put on by Skillsmatter, which were good events and I learnt new stuff, I just didn’t get around to blogging about it.

Tumblr

As well as blogging I started writing small posts on Tumblr about JavaScript.

This year…

Based on how I’ve managed to do over the last couple of years in achieving my goals and that I want to spend more time with my family I’m going to keep to a small number of goals, in fact I’m taking a leaf out of JD Meiers Getting Results the Agile Way and I’m only defining 3 goals:

JavaScript/SPA

I am going to continue to learn JavaScript, there are books to read, videos to watch, podcasts to listen to and blog posts to read, which includes working with Node.js as well, and I am already booked to go to JSConf London in February which will be my first non .Net conference which I’m looking forward to.

Going hand in hand with JavaScript is Single Page Applications (SPA), I have some experience with this having working on building an Angular.js application but I want to try other technologies to learn more about creating this type of application.

Code

During last year I read and watched a lot of material, but I didn’t code enough, so I am looking at writing more code.  As I am continuing to learn JavaScript I’m going to focus more on developing both and client and server side JavaScript, to help I’m looking to incrementally build up an app and I am aiming to post about my experience.

Blog

I am looking to do at least 1 post a month (not including this one) and it is unlikely that I will continue to post on Tumblr, I would rather have a single source of information (both for me and anybody who reads my blog) rather than having posts on different platforms.

One change I may make, time permitting, is moving this blog to my own host but that is only if time permits.

Summary

So I didn’t do so well on my goals for 2013 but I’m being philosophical on that.

This year I’m taking into account the actual amount of time I have available after spending time with my family and setting goals appropriately.

That’s my plans for 2014, if they line up with what you’re intending to do drop me a line as its always nice to collaborate and do stuff with other people than by yourself.