The Brotherhood of Becoming Better Developers
Just over six months ago (at the end of June 2007), I started on a path to becoming a better developer. This was a movement started by the impressive, charismatic and sexy blogger Justice Gray (the check is in the mail right?). He hand picked me to be in on the first generation of developers dedicated to focusing the next six months of their lives to becoming a better developer. I immediately hopped on board (by "immediately" I mean after several nagging emails from Justice to get started) this movement ......
Seriously. Reading the entire way through a tech book is hard. I'm currently working on reading Code Complete as part of meeting one of my goals for "Becoming a Better Developer". This has become the one goal that I am having a serious struggle to finish this month. It's one of the hardest things I have done recently. I'm talking deadline is in a few days and you just realized that extra little feature you added during the final stages of the project when you knew you shouldn't but figured it wouldn't ......
Well, I gave my first team presentation today as part of my "Being a Better Developer" goals. Today's topic was "A Refresher Course on Debugging" and you can read the article I wrote for the topic if you follow that link. The article was based on (i.e. copied from) one of the best debugging articles I have ever read. You can read the original and much more in depth article on debugging here (warning, it has a game development focus, but is still applicable to most developers). The presentation itself ......
I was listening to Scott Hansleman's 70th podcast the other day and it brought back a memory from the MVP summit. It was at one of the Microsoft parties and towards the end of the night (did I mention the drinks were free?), I bumped into Scott Hanselman and had a little conversation with him. I've seen Scott around, being from the same area we attend some of the same geek events like the Portland Code Camp, but this was my first time I ever engaged him in a one on one conversation. It was a blast! ......
Today marks the start of my journey to becoming a better developer. I am telling you all about it so that I can be held accountable for things I am about to say. I did not want to over think this but I did want to do things that challenged me as a developer on a variety of level. This is the current list of 6 months goals. I will not remove anything from this list, but I may add to it as I begin this journey to improve as a developer. I will read 1 technical book every month for the next 6 months. ......
April 17th, 2007 is a day that has been burned into my mind. This is the day I was given a very serious task. This is the day I was branded with a mark. The mark is for a brotherhood. The task I was assigned was to spread the gospel of the brotherhood to others. Later, I was to then brand those ready to accept the tenets of the faith with the mark of the brotherhood. I was to assign to them my task and make it theirs. I was to continue in this work in perpetuity. What is the brotherhood? It’s a vision ......