I'm making good progress on my goals so far. I haven't quite finished the first week of the year, but I think that I've built some good momentum. I'll at least be able to finish January strong.
I'm trying to make sure that I have something tangible for my efforts for January. While I am trying to read books (4 fiction, 1 theological, 1 non-fiction) I want to create something. The blogging and the novel writing both give me tangible products.
At the beginning of February I'll have something to look back on. Hopefully that will inspire me to keep up my efforts.
Yesterday I started playing WoW when I first settled down for the evening. Trying to get momentum to work on something "productive" was a lot harder than the days when I just first sit down and get cracking writing or building or researching.
I still haven't settled on what kind of work environment I'm going to program in. I'm thinking of going with Java, but I've been toying with the idea of working in Lisp. I could in theory go work in Small Talk (or a derivative like Squeak), but I'm not sure how practical that would be.
One of my purposes with all of these goals is to sharpen my life skills. The other is to make myself better at my own job. Working with a variety of languages and learning to look at problems more generally will help. Also I'm hoping to sharpen myself on languages I haven't used in a while so I can do some freelancing on the side.
This will probably be my last post for the week. I'll be over the 1000 word goal, so I won't have as much incentive to post. Well, if I post anything else it will probably be more links and less monologue. I really enjoy other sites that have links and commentary. I'll try to have more of that next week. An added bonus will be more articles since each will have less text.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Programming for fun and profit
I am a computer programmer. I program for a living and my degree is in Computer Science. One day I was sitting around reflecting on jobs and I thought, how often do most people use their job in their everyday life.
I have a friend who is an electrician. Whenever he has problems with the electrical stuff in his house he can bust out his tools (which he has an impressive array of) and get to work.
I know plenty of people who are handy around the house. When they need a tool to perform a job they can go make it using their assortment of other tool-making tools. Working on construction has given them a strong bent towards the practical.
So, I applied this to myself. What am I good at doing and how can I take advantage of that in my own life.
Computer programs, at their best, help us make life easier.
I write code to help people fill out paperwork so they can get money faster. Fill in all the fields in the process of normal work and I'll use it to populate your paperwork so you don't have to pay someone else to do it. It removes simple, repetitive, tedious work.
How often do I have things in my life that are tedious, simple, and repetitive?
There are a lot of different ways to look at that. I can write something to automate a lot of stuff. My biggest problem is forgetting things, so some kind of automated reminder system would help. That's just one example.
For now I'm going to concentrate on simple tools. The first project (it's very small) is to make a tool that does word counting.
Let me be clear - this is a solved problem.
I'm not breaking new ground. I'm not innovating. I'm not shooting for the moon.
What I am doing is building a code base and a tool set, so that later in life when I need something more complicated I have a nice set to pull already functioning tools from.
It also has an immediate use, in helping me to keep up with whether or not I'm meeting my weekly goals of blogging 1000 words.
So, if you have a profession let me encourage you to ask yourself how you can use it in your everyday life. It is something you're already good at. Use it for yourself, not just your employer.
I have a friend who is an electrician. Whenever he has problems with the electrical stuff in his house he can bust out his tools (which he has an impressive array of) and get to work.
I know plenty of people who are handy around the house. When they need a tool to perform a job they can go make it using their assortment of other tool-making tools. Working on construction has given them a strong bent towards the practical.
So, I applied this to myself. What am I good at doing and how can I take advantage of that in my own life.
Computer programs, at their best, help us make life easier.
I write code to help people fill out paperwork so they can get money faster. Fill in all the fields in the process of normal work and I'll use it to populate your paperwork so you don't have to pay someone else to do it. It removes simple, repetitive, tedious work.
How often do I have things in my life that are tedious, simple, and repetitive?
There are a lot of different ways to look at that. I can write something to automate a lot of stuff. My biggest problem is forgetting things, so some kind of automated reminder system would help. That's just one example.
For now I'm going to concentrate on simple tools. The first project (it's very small) is to make a tool that does word counting.
Let me be clear - this is a solved problem.
I'm not breaking new ground. I'm not innovating. I'm not shooting for the moon.
What I am doing is building a code base and a tool set, so that later in life when I need something more complicated I have a nice set to pull already functioning tools from.
It also has an immediate use, in helping me to keep up with whether or not I'm meeting my weekly goals of blogging 1000 words.
So, if you have a profession let me encourage you to ask yourself how you can use it in your everyday life. It is something you're already good at. Use it for yourself, not just your employer.
2011 will hopefully be a banner year for this blog
So, yeah this year I have a goal. That goal is to blog 1000 words a week. This goes along with a host of other goals. So expect to see more blogging.
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