Caffeinated Coder

Here’s the second half of my whirlwind chronological tour of my past year from the perspective of my blog and technical life (see first half here):

1. July: Take THAT legacy code – I didn’t write a single post during this month, however I had a very productive time at work as a result of finally getting the hang of Rhino.Mocks and the Dependency Injection pattern as well as convincing my boss to let me start ripping open test seams in our code base. I’ve been able to leave clusters of tests around every area of code I’ve touched since then and have been a much happier coder as a result.
2. Aug: My Blogging Hiatus – I finally break 2 months of blogging silence with Blogging Hiatus: Next Stop Shark Jump. Although I suffered minor bouts of blogger guilt, I mostly just enjoyed the extra free time. Sofia finally started sleeping through the night so I was able to not only catch up on my sleep, but also enjoy get in some nighttime reading for the first time in ages. Besides indulging in rereading some light fantasy favorites, I made my way through the Kite Runner and Agile Web Development with Rails.
3. Sept: Rethinking Links – Every since I started blogging, I sought to incorporate some way to comment on other posts that I liked. In the beginning, I fulfilled this need through a humorous series of posts that I called the Caffeinated Codeys. Although I had a great time writing these, I eventually felt too constrained by the format and frequency so I quietly abandoned it around the time Sofia was born. During this month I briefly experimented with an automated Delicious feed but quickly abandoned it in favor of the Triple Shot Links format, which I like quite a bit and plan to keep doing.
4. Oct: A Tech Book Windfall – I responded to Jurgen Appelo’s $100 tech book contest questions with a couple of posts on what motivates and unmotivates me and as a result got myself some shiny new copies of Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, and Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit. Not surprisingly, I still haven’t had a chance to read them, but that’s what New Year’s Resolutions are for, right?
5. Nov:  Progress on R# Jedi Training: I’ve been using R# for about a year and a half now, but it wasn’t until this month that I broke out of my novice rut. I came up with some techniques to extend my knowledge of this most excellent product earlier in the year, but it wasn’t until I volunteered to speak at the KC Day of Dot Net that my motivation kicked in enough to make some real progress. There’s nothing like the fear of public humiliation to help further your expertise in a given area.
6. Dec: Milestones in both Rails and Source Control: I finish the year with a bang by launching my first Rails app into production, thus simultaneously completing one of my 2008 resolutions as well as making my wife a happy camper (it was an e-commerce site for her jewelry business). On the work front, I spent most of the month on a VSS to SVN Migration project, thus ensuring my final victory over my most hated arch-nemesis.

I guess 2008 wasn’t such a bad year after all…

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