Seven Things I Want to Do Differently in 2008

January 21, 2008 Russell Ball 4 comments

This is the sequel to my Seven Things I Did Right in 2007 post. Now I am going to cover the “Stop Doing” and “Start Doing” categories of my agile retrospective format.

What I want to start doing in 2008

Become a Committer on an Open Source Project- I took a few steps towards open source involvement with the Cruise Control project this last year, but still haven’t even submitted a fix to an open source project yet. Partly I want to become a committer because I feel guilty for all the free stuff I’ve enjoyed from the open source world over the years without ever contributing anything back, but I also think that this will be a good career growth opportunity in that it would expose me to new codebases, development styles, and project types that I don’t usually get to work on.
Establish Book Reading Habit- I can’t help but feel embarrassed every time I walk past my bookshelf these days and see the dozen technical classics that I’ve only partially read. I decided that the only way I’m going to finally finish them all is if I carve out a regular reading schedule. I’m going to start by spending 2-3 lunch hours a week reading in a nearby cafe.
Seek out new kinds of speaking and writing opportunities – This year I’d like to challenge myself to speak at bigger venues like code camps or conferences. As far as writing goes, I would like to submit at least one article to a major publication like MSDN magazine as well as seek out some paid guest blogging opportunities.
Learn Ruby – Partly I have this as a goal because I am sick of reading all the hype without any first hand experience on which to form my own opinions. Mostly, however, I finally have a real reason to use it because my wife wants me to build a site for her new jewelry business and my hosting company already has the required Ruby infrastructure in place.
Start using ORM frameworks and IoC containers – I feel as though I missing out on a couple of extremely key technologies by not using frameworks to assist with data access and dependency injection. That is why NHibernate and the Windsor Container are at the top on my list of things to learn and start incorporating into current projects in 2008.

What I started in 2007 that I want to STOP doing:

Staying up too late – I used to get to bed at a decent hour, but during the last six months I have been regularly staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning reading blogs, writing posts, and playing around with new tools and technologies. Although that is a very productive time of the day for me, I’ve also noticed my alertness the next day tends to suffer. A sleep deprived developer is a stupid developer, so I’m going to try to discipline myself to stop working a little bit earlier each night this year.
Reading only about technology – For the first time ever, almost all the reading I’ve done this last year has been technical. Besides making me extremely boring to talk to, I fear that I am also on a course to burn myself out. My first task is to find some good fiction books to read this year. I’m open to suggestions…

Since continuing old habits is much easier than starting new ones, time will tell whether or not I will be successful in any of these endeavors. Regardless of the outcome, I do think there is value in at least taking the time to formulate and verbalize a plan.

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#1 | Written by Christopher Boyle about 4 years ago.

Authors to check out:

Andrew Vachss

Robert Parker (Spenser and so many others)

Dick Francis

Brad Thor

Sue Grafton

Lillian Jackson Braun

Christopher J. Boyle
#2 | Written by Lew about 4 years ago.

As a professional programmer and amateur photographer I was struck by your point that you’d read about things other than technology.

It reminded me of some advice I was given recently that if one is interested in improving at photography one should talk to artists, and not other photographers.

I guess the same goes for technology. Perhaps to be a better developer we should be reading books on psychology or human interaction. Heck even something like architecture or product design might give better insight in to writing better software.
#3 | Written by Russell Ball about 4 years ago.

@Lew – It is well established that cross-training leads to better performance in your chosen field in the physical realm, so I guess I naturally assume that it also holds true in the mental realm.

Being able to make creative analogies are a key component in problem solving, it seems to me that the more varied experiences you have, the more apt you are to be able to make those connections.

And of course there is the whole “you’ll lose perspective and nobody will want to be around you” argument too…:-)
#4 | Written by Robz about 4 years ago.

Non technical books:

The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. He has been writing this seven book series since 1982 and has only recently finished it in 2004. I can tell you it is one of the best literary works I have ever read. I started reading in High school and I am just finishing up the last book.

http://www.stephenking.com/DarkTower/