Goals for 2015

07 Jan 2015 by Nigel Sampson

I find it’s a good idea to set out my goals for the year so I can look back and see how I’ve done. Last year was mostly about survival with the arrival of my daughter, hopefully this year I can really get back into it.

When setting goals like this I feel they should be really high level and more about direction than finite end goals. I heard a great quote a few nights ago from Claudia Batten that sums it up beautifully.

We think that we’re here and we want to be there and we expect a straight line. If we expect a straight line the disappointments that we get when that doesn’t come feel like failures and they feel like points where we want to give up.

Goals

1. F# - It’s always a good thing for a developer to learn a new language, especially when it’s in a different paradigm that what you work with every day. While I can read / understand F# actually building software with it is certainly a goal. I can see a real space building the core logic of an app in F# and the UI in C#. Will have to see how well this works.
2. Xamarin - Experimenting more with this, potentially adding Caliburn.Micro support and generally just broadening my experience in mobile app development.
3. Functional Reactive Programming - Apps are becoming increasingly complicated and we need something to help deal with this. A lot of the concepts in Reactive UI appeal to me, part of this will be looking at ways to better integrate the features of Caliburn.Micro I love into this as well.
4. Hub Bug for Windows 10 - I’ve been working on a design refresh plus foundations for new features for Hub Bug that I’ll probably hold off on till use whatever new features are coming in Windows 10 (if applicable).
5. More Posts - Every blog author pretty much has this goal, I usually start strong but fade off near the end of a year.
6. Speaking - Last year had more public speaking than any other point in my career and I’m starting to get a taste for it (a Toastmasters course we held at Marker Metro certainly helped), I hope to continue with this and maybe try and speak somewhere outside of New Zealand.

So that’s the plan for 2015, I think there’s a consistent theme across all the goals and a broad direction rather than just a straight line.

Here’s a to great 2015 for everyone.