New Year's programming resolutions

It’s that time of year. In no particular order, here’s a quick list of goals for Paul-as-developer in 2007.

  • Convert my remaining legacy PHP code (side projects and regular work both) to Django.
  • Write a useful PyObjC application.
  • Make some kind of contribution to Python itself, if possible.
  • Continue to add revision control and deployment automation to existing projects, as well as using it on new projects.
  • Continue to add unit tests to existing projects, as well as using them on new projects.
  • Learn a new language well enough to write a useful (small) application. Current candidates (all of which I’ve done at least enough reading on to have specific reasons for my interest, and some of which I’ve written toy programs in) are Haskell, Common Lisp, Io, Objective-C, and Ruby.

So, what about you? What are your coding goals for 2007?


Lawrence Oluyede commented on Tue Jan 2 04:15:35 2007:

I tried with PyObjC but I couldn’t make it work so I gave up. Anyway I chose my 2007 new language and it’s Erlang. See my first “tests” at http://www.oluyede.org/blog/category/erlang/


Ville Säävuori commented on Tue Jan 2 06:45:03 2007:

PyObjC looks interesting. Maybe I should add it to my list. Don’t know what I could possibly do with it, but still =P

But, my goals for 2007 are:

  • Convert my (fairly large, in Finnish) site fully to Django from PHP and static pages.
  • Learn more Python.
  • Contribute to Django somehow.
  • Learn unit testing with Django.
  • Learn (better) the basics of functional programming.
  • Attend to EuroPython ( http://www.europython.org/ )

Hopefully I’ll manage to shorten that list at least with one item :)


Daniel Lindsley commented on Tue Jan 2 18:00:14 2007:

  • Finish our tumblelog (built on Django of course).
  • Build another PyGame application.
  • Add unit testing to all future programs.
  • Expand my knowledge of Javascript so that it’s no longer a “last resort”.

I have other aspirations but that’ll do for now.


Christopher Arndt commented on Tue Jan 2 18:27:13 2007:

Hey, the last four resolutions sound just like mine!

I always wonder, if it would be worth, if not learn to love, at least learn to program Java properly. At least from a career perspective. But I am now self-employed, so I get to decide which language is used for the projects and that means it will be Python most of the time ;-)

Some of my additional goals:

  • Learn Django by creating some microapp (so I am able to form a well founded opinion whether TurboGears is really better ;-)

  • Write less comments in Blogs and mailing lists and more code ;-)


Rod Hyde commented on Wed Jan 3 10:19:52 2007:

  • Contribute to an open-source project that uses Python; the most likely candidate is Pyglet as it combines two things I enjoy, namely Python and games.
  • Finish a game during the next PyWeek.
  • Use C# to write a tabbed-notebook app similar to KeyNote.
  • Finally get around to writing that genetically programmed RTS (and then I woke up).

mike commented on Thu Jan 4 13:46:28 2007:

Do you have considered the just released but very good “D” Programming Language?

It compiles, and is much more worth learning than for example ruby :D


Paul commented on Thu Jan 4 14:00:13 2007:

Yeah, D looks very cool and it’s certainly getting a lot of buzz. If I were a Java, C++, or C# programmer I’d be all over it, and even so I’m more interested in it than any of those three. But my superficial impression is that it’s a C-like language which has taken good ideas from dynamic languages – making it not “different” enough for the mind-stretching aspect of my particular quest.



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