My Developer Goals For 2017
For me, 2016 has been a year of changes.
I moved to another country (Leiden, the Netherlands), I changed my job, as well as my work style by focusing on long-term product-oriented projects instead of customer-oriented agency works with short deadlines.
So, as this “My Development Blog” publication has just begun, I thought that it would be nice to write down some of my development related goals for the next year to see my progress. I can thereby question myself during and at the end of the year about the goals I have set.
1 — Learn JavaScript
Well I know JavaScript, use it daily bases for many years but to be honest on JS front, for most of the time I was a jQuery developer. On most projects I did javascript was secondary to server-side language I’m using (mostly PHP). And my first language was ActionScript, so while starting JavaScript I skipped some of the basics a lot.
Recently, I got to meet with the incredible VueJS (for which my love gets stronger everyday), started actively using it at work and I also started some online NodeJS courses. Naturally I realised I’m missing some base knowledge on javascript and patch that up with my knowledge in other languages.
Now it is time (maybe even due) for me to learn JavaScript inside out so I can continue with more exciting things on that front with a strong hand. So, this year, hopefully I will write and you will read more about JavaScript on this blog.
2 — Publish at least 2 open source project
I love open source, I use open source but do I open source enough? Nope!
Last year, out of my own frustration, I developed and published a WordPress plugin called Clean WP Admin Menu. It does what name says and nothing more, very simple, small but useful plugin. Developing and sharing this really felt good because at that time I received many positive feedbacks from the WordPress community, even being mentioned in WP Tavern. I even met a few people via this plugin. But unfortunately I couldn’t continue. But this has got to change in 2017, right!
My goal is publishing at least 2 open source projects and also continuing with this one. I’m thinking of at least one Processwire module (by the way have you tried Processwire? It is awesome++) and one JS related project, something on VueJS maybe. Or maybe one more small but useful WordPress plugin?!?
3 — Attend more meetups
Before moving to Leiden in July 2016, I have lived in Budapest for 2 years. Apart from making a lot of friends from Meetup groups, I also co-founded Budapest WordPress Meetup Group and met great people there.
After moving to Leiden I’ve attended only a handful meetups, for a few reasons. Aside from some minor excuses, my major excuse was my lower back problem that I suffered from throughout second half of the year. For a few months I worked around 6 hours a day on a standing desk with the hope of fixing it. And of course that much standing takes a toll and I was usually beaten up to join meetups, talking to people, etc.
But thanks to those efforts and a skilled physiotherapist now I’m much better, I will continue to attend more meetups because even only a few meetups that I attended were really enjoyable and I want to do it more often.
4 — More TDD
As I told above, previously I worked at the agency line of business and deadlines were almost always pressing. So, except a few cases, things like test driven development, unit tests, functional tests etc. were skipped.
Now with the current job we are developing a long term product, thus without proper testing and more importantly without embracing a TDD approach, it would be hard to handle the product as it gets bigger. You know there will be consequences.
Luckily, we have quite a good pace so far, but can be much much better.
5 — Write more
And yes, writing more! This year I will write more, and to put a goal to it, let’s say at least one post per week and no skipping lots of weeks and finally writing 50 posts in December is not a valid option!
In order to keep it achievable, I set the goal to one post per week but with this blog I would like to do more, also writing shorter, some of them more daily posts.
Conclusion
I tried to set some realistic, reachable goals for myself for 2017. Of course I also have some non-development related ones like learning Dutch, doing more sportive activities. I am sure I will have some real and some imaginary obstacles to prevent those from happening but we’ll see who will win at the end.
Thank you for reading, I hope you’ll have a wonderful 2017 and may your goals reach their target.
