2015. My year of unfulfilled resolutions. And my some thoughts on my new years resolution.

Sigh. I wanted to learn so much stuff this year. Exiting stuff. Great stuff. Of which I accomplished only a small fraction.

Let's take a closer look at all of those items I wanted to learn.

Programming languages:

• Python
• Rust
• Go
• Ruby
• Haskell
• Prolog
• Scala

Frameworks:

• Ext JS
• Spring
• Spring MVC
• EmberJS
• Express
• Ionic
• MongoDB
• Docker
• Node.JS

Let's look at the programming languages one by one. I have learnt Python a little bit. So much, n fact, that I was able to write DubbelVla. But not that much, that I would apply for a job demanding Python experience.

Rust, Go, Ruby, Haskell, Scala weren't touched by me at all. My progress in PROLOG resulted in writing some half-assed code failing to load contents from a file.

Now let's look at the frameworks. I haven't touched Spring. I wrote just a little bit code in Spring MVC, just enough to get some stuff done on the job. EmberJS, Express, Ionic, MongoDB, Docker I haven't touched at all. I used NodeJS to write some mini script for some special task I don't even remember any more. The framework I learnt best is ExtJS. I know ExtJS pretty good today. The others not so much.

So, how do I go from here? First, I have to realize, I was waaaay too ambitious. I thought: Hey, that would be cool to learn. I would be cool if I knew Docker. Perhaps comparable to some teenager boy who thinks he would be cool if he learnt to play the guitar.

The problem is, it had no real value for me. Being cool for the sake of being cool just does not cut it.

Another problem is: If you want to do so much, there's alway some shit that you don't do. When I learn ExtJS, I can't learn Docker. I completely lacked any priority.

But that's not enough of problems: My resolutions also completely lacked any scope. What the heck does it mean to "learn Ionic"? Read some shit about it? Surf their website? Create a multimillion code-line app with Ionic? I had no clue and I still don't.

So. Now What? Avoid all new year's resolutions? Nah. Don't want to.

I have to come up with some new year's resolutions. Some that are meaningful. Some that are scoped.  Some that are well chosen and not just a bunch of random items. I will do that tomorrow.

DubbelVla is ready for dessert

It feels great. I just "finished" my first Github project: DubbelVla.
It lists identical files in one directory.

I learned a little bit of Python for this one. Although I don't know much Python, those were the things, that made me like this language:

• Syntax. It just so beautiful. I wish, JavaScript had this great syntax
• OMG, it's functional. Did not expect that. Something more to dive in.
• Maps with JSON-like Syntax. Like. +1.

Update on My Learning

Hi there,

I'm going to specify more on the stuff I'm going to learn this year.

So, for the seven programming languages:

It's really tempting to buy just the book "7 Programming Languages in 7 Weeks" and do just that.
That would be sensible in many ways, and perhaps I'll do that.

So: These are the seven languages I'm going to learn this year:

1. Python
2. Rust
3. Go
4. Ruby
5. Haskell
6. Prolog
7. Scala

Currently, I'm learning Python. DubbelVla will be my the project to be implemented in this newly learned language.

For the other languages, I will decide when I finish DubbelVla. I will think about a new project to learn each language.
I don't know about Swift, about R and other cool stuff, that's on my personal hype list. It would be great and learn all of them but I don't think I have the time.


So, what about the seven frameworks, libraries, whatever?

1. Ext JS
2. Spring
3. Spring MVC
4. EmberJS
5. Express 
6. Ionic
7. MongoDB
8. Docker
9. Node.JS

Yup, now I named them. I can't decide which of them to take. Anyway, I will have at least learned seven of them.

Today I learned: My most painfully learned, hard to write blog post is the one, that help most people.

I did not write much so far in this. About one article per month or so. Mostly boring stuff, stuff, that does not even interest me any longer. (Who cares about my web projects some two years ago? I do. But only me does.)

But there are some articles, which took long work. Which meant a great amount of work and learning. And one of the most painful and hard-to-grasp article, which took me even quite a long to write (oh boy, I remember hating formatting that article so much...), leaving me with a feeling of "sooo... Nobody has this problem, but me. Nobody is interested in my stuff. So why did I even spend time for writing this?".

I still remember how it happened, that I wrote this article: I struggled massively building a facebook-timeline-like visualization of the history of an order in the web-based license-creation app for my employer. I just could not get the positioning of the elements to work correctly. Not by CSS (hey, that was 2012, so flexbox was unheard of), not by some javascript magic i could figure it out. Then it clicked. It had something to do this the browsers layouting engine. So if I just postponed the position calculation after the layouting has been done by the browser, I could calcalute all that stuff correctly and would not have to deal with some strange zero-pixel heights of divs.

So I wrote that article.

So have a comparison, how much this article stands out relative to other articles I wrote: In an all-time count, this article has over 7000 views. The second place, also an article about web development, has only 370 views.

But what surprised me today, that that AngularJS-related article is still being actively linked an clicked.
It seems, that I was absolutely wrong about with my thought about the uselessness of that article. I was horribly wring. This small article, although it was hard to learn, is now a help to others.

And that is just wonderful.

So, what did I learn?

Today, perhaps the part, the only thing, that comes to my mind about stuff which I learned today about programming, is that Select2 does support a timeout, which first waits for a user to stop typing and fires the ajax call after that timeout. This is a really neat feature, since it prevents flooding the backend with a bunch of highly unspecific queries.

But there is a feeling of not really having anything new. Why? Yesterday I bragged about the little stuff, that adds up over time. And I still believe this. The problem with such very small increments, is that it's not hard to learn such small stuff. It's not really rare and hence, not really too valuable.

The really valuable and rare stuff is always outside one's comfort zone. And that makes it so rare, because only a few are willing to step out their comfort zone to learn new stuff.

For me, next to the problem of willingness, my problem is time management. When shall I learn all this great new stuff? How should I handle all those commitments in personal life, church, in your career, in your self development? I guess, only by refusing new commitments and slowly stepping out of existing ones.

So again, (I know, I repeat myself), time is the only real currency in your life. Choose wisely.