Thursday, March 29, 2012

Spring cleaning

Just a small post to myself, really.  Things I want to focus on this year (aside from actual paying projects):

Hone my design skills - I suck at design.  I think I'm a decent critic of design, but creating my own has always been troublesome.  I'm not an artist.  Even my stick figures suck.  That said, the flexible design book from A Book Apart really opened my eyes to some things, answered some questions I had never previously received clear answers to.  So, with that, I'll redesign my home site, which was made in a rush in order to get free hosting a couple years ago (it definitely looks like it was made in 15 minutes), and my awesome secret personal projects.

Get more familiar with JavaScript, jQuery, and maybe even Node.js - I'm not a complete newbie with JS.  I mean, I own and read Resig's book.  I'm definitely not what I'd consider to be proficient, though.  In today's development world, that's like saying, "I like computers, it's just that pesky keyboard and mouse I'm not comfortable with."

Ruby on Rails - I figure an additional tool in my toolbox couldn't hurt.  It was either that or Python/Django, and I'm not a fan of the idea of whitespace actually conveying meaning.

Longer term things:

Learn a functional language - Thinking F# is the way to go.  I mean, I already have it with VS.  Might as well learn it.

Make a game - I'm probably the only programmer nerd on the planet that's never made a completely functional, simple game.  I had the skeleton of a web-based, turn-based RPG written in ASP.NET web forms (yeah, getting to that point was as painful as it sounds), but it lies languishing on my HDD.  Since I hate web forms, I doubt I'll touch it again.  So, some kind of Tetris/Breakout clone, written either in C++ or XNA.

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