I wrote a [blog post] (/rants/2012/01/13/the-learning-list.html) in 2012 about some technical learning goals. Given that it’s almost 2013, I feel it’s a pretty good idea to re-examine the list and set up a new one. But first, let’s take a look at the 2012 list:

1. Scala - Play Framework?

• I’ve dabbled with some Scala, and wrote a quick Facebook app in Java with the Play framework at a Heroku event, but that was about it

• The reason I want to learn Scala is to:

  • Have mastery over a static (i.e. - fast = NOT Ruby or Python), expressive (i.e.- NOT Java or C variants) language
  • Think in a different paradigm and solve problems better (since Scala provides fully-featured OOP and Functional language features)

2. Functional Programming

• See point 1.

3. Improve Photoshop Skillz

• Whenever I write new websites, I make mock ups with Photoshop (though it seems bootstrap and WYSIWYG editors seem to remove that need nowadays), as well as to shim things, resize things, etc etc.
• Improve is vague, but let’s call it a YES, before I start getting too depressed

4. Intro to Machine Learning

• Intro is a vague term, I’ve learned Bayes’ Theorem from my stats course, but that’s about it, so NOPE
• I’ve also read a number of articles and have an idea of some approaches, but TBH, people spend their lives researching this topic, so this point is far too broad

5. Intro to Distributed Systems

• I think I’ve covered a lot of ground in this field, but I feel it’s more accurate to say “Learning to Scale Things”, i.e.:

  • Can you understand what they talk about on the high scalability blog and have an idea of replicating that system (thanks in large part to Inkling)

6. Learn more about entrepreneurship and how to ship code for a startup

• I’ve worked at two startups in San Francisco (PagerDuty and Inkling), and the learning I’ve done at both arguably beats probably four internships at bigger companies in terms of useful things I’ve learned

7. NoSQL - MongoDB and Redis?

• Redis, MongoDB, memcached, and an appreciation of what other DBs have to offer, and why most everyone should be OKAY with Postgres/MySQL

8. Maybe improve my C/C++ skills? Might be useful for distributed

• Only for school, not really worth the development time if starting from scratch, so it’s punted

9. Learn more about large-scale web application architecture, SoA?

• See 5.

10. Android/iOS Development

• Haven’t found anything worth pursuing in the form a of a mobile app, but I’ve got a copy of RubyMotion now ;)

11. Backbone.js

• Thanks to side projects and PagerDuty :)

Based on the list, we’ve only accomplished a meager 6/11 goals. That means that the goals are either too vague in scope, unnecessary, or I’m just too lazy. So for 2013, I’ll set fewer, focused goals.

My 2013 goals as an engineer:

1. Learn Scala (be proficient enough to code review others)

2. Make money off of a side project

3. Write at least 10 blog posts this year

4. Refactor blog to support more posts

5. Do at least one hackathon

6. Go to at least three developer meetups/conferences

7. Try out Cassandra/Riak (high volume data stores)

8. Learn Map/Reduce and techniques for building out “Big Data” analytics systems

For this year, I feel it’s pretty important to work on other aspects as an engineer (business and social-wise), and to not purely focus on technical skills.

Here’s to a New Year!