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Chris' Year in Review 2008
Chris Missal, December 21, 2008
Even though 2008 isn't over yet, I'd still like to share some reasons why it has been the best year for me as a developer yet.
I was able to attend many great events as you'll see below, but what really amazes me is that these were all in the second half of 2008. Some of these are .Net User Group meetings, some are code camps, others are conferences. This list is anything I attended that was aimed at developing software.
| 07/07 | Synchronization Services in ADO.NET Presented by Clint Edmonson |
Cedar Rapids, IA |
|---|---|---|
| 08/04 - 08/07 | E-tail 2008 http://www.wbresearch.com/etail/ |
Washington, DC |
| 08/08 | Virtualization Basics for Developers Presented by Arian Kulp |
Cedar Rapids, IA |
| 09/06 | Codeapalooza http://www.codeapalooza.com/ ...my notes |
Chicago, IL |
| 10/06 | Continuous Integration with TeamCity Presented by Chris Sutton |
Cedar Rapids, IA |
| 10/30-11/02 | Continuous Improvement in Software Development Conference http://www.kaizenconf.com/ |
Austin, TX |
| 11/03 | Understanding Microsoft Unity Presented by Jeff Brand |
Cedar Rapids, IA |
| 11/08 | Iowa Code Camp
Hosted by Iowa.NET and CRIneta.org http://iowacodecamp.com/ |
West Des Moines, IA |
| 12/08 | WPF Demystified Presented by Mike Benkovich |
Cedar Rapids, IA |
Additionally, I picked up some new tools and libraries that have helped me write better code and write it more easily and faster. Everything in this list is new to me in 2008; a year ago today I wasn't aware of any of these. I take pride in the fact that I've learned a lot, but also a little embarrassed that I wasn't using these long ago.
| ReSharper by JetBrains | This can be summed up as: "You don't know what you've got til it's gone." When I'm not using it, I feel like I'm moving super slow. |
|---|---|
| NHibernate | I still have a lot to learn of NHibernate, but I'll tell you one thing, I won't be writing any more raw SQL on new applications. |
| Castle Project | There is so much in the Castle project that I have yet to explore. I really like Windsor Container for DI and IoC and the Validators are wonderful as well. |
| NUnit | I use this instead of MSTest. It's a preference thing for me, but I like the extras that NUnit offers. |
| TestDriven.Net | Since I prefer NUnit, TestDriven.Net is a great add-on to Visual Studio to run my tests. |
| jQuery | I've spent a lot of time working with jQuery and it has made JavaScript fun again. This library only gets better each month. Also, Microsoft is now shipping this with ASP.Net MVC so it's good to know that others will be able to enjoy it as much as I am. |
| Greasemonkey | This Firefox add-on has been great at allowing me to add on features to sites that aren't available. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 Check out my Greasemonkey script for Twitter |
| Rhino Mocks | As many others previous, I still have a lot to explore in Rhino Mocks. Once you have a decent feel for the syntax, it makes testing much less painful in certain spots. |
| GhostDoc | Keeps me disciplined when documenting since it does all the work for you. |
| Subversion | A year ago, all I knew about when it came to source control management was Visual Source Safe, kind of like ReSharper. I didn't know what I was missing. There are others out there, I'd like to try out Git also. Making the leap to anything from VSS is what should be noted here. |
I owe a lot of thanks to Tim Barcz and Chris Sutton for all of their guidance and help whenever I need it. I know there will be more to come and hopefully I can keep tapping their brains for answers and ideas.
Personal Development Goals for 2009
In 2007 I had 6 posts, so far in 2008, I have had 40. My goal for 2009 is 72 posts; an average of six per month. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I had work hard just to hit the mark of 40 that I did in 2008. (The first one in 2008 was May though... so we'll see if the 72 will be hard or not).
- Write a website application using Ruby on Rails
- I'd like to learn this to increase my knowledge of the developer world. There seems to be a lot going on with Ruby and I don't want to miss out on the fun.
- Blogs as Series of Posts
- Single posts are fine, but I'd like to give some detailed posts that may take a lot longer to write, but are more rewarding to readers in that they go beyond single, one-time usages.
- Give Presentations
- I'd like to present a topic at a CRIneta User Group meeting and possibly at one of the two Iowa Code Camps.
- More blog posts
- As stated earlier, I want to publish 72 posts or more in 2009.
- Two or more commits to Open Source
- Commit at least 2 bug fixes, patches, or enhancements to open source projects.
Last year I didn't have a goals list so I have nothing to compare against. This time next year I'll have to see how I did.
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