Back in 1995 I thought that Java was a toy and that it was not going to ever make any real impact on programming. When I first started doing web development I thought that JavaScript was pointless and that there was no good reason that anyone would ever use it for anything serious.
Well, I was at least right that for the most part, applets have faded into the mists of time. But, I use Java pretty much every day. I love the performance that I am able to get on the back-end server. And, over the past six years I have been able to figure out that JavaScript is worth my time too. If I had just figured out that everyone was just misusing it when they made all of those scrolling marquees and flashing text sooner! AJAX has made web browsers into my preferred front end clients.
Since I keep having it pushed into my face that I have been a bad prognosticator I have been trying to be more open minded about technology. Which, has the unfortunate side effect of eating all of my free time. The parade of technology that has been demanding my attention has done nothing but speed up over the past few years. In its wake are hours of my time that were spent starting to learn about a tool, language, or technique only to have something else come along and steal my attention.
I am really tired of swimming so hard against the stream and getting nowhere, so...
I have made a list of the new things that I am going to focus on in the next year or so. And here it is:
- Responsive web design (in particular the Foundation framework)
- Dart (the language)
- AngularJS and AngularDart
- Python (the programming language, not the snakes)
What would be really nice if each of those were nicely contained - but they aren't. So, each of them is really the label on a fairly big bag of learning.
On the plus side, I have some actual progress on the beginning of my list. My origami website (that goes along with the Android app that I wrote) Origami Central was written taking advantage of the Foundation framework and should be reasonably workable both on the desk top and on mobile devices. There is still a fairly long way to go with it so it will be getting better over time. And, I have also been able to jam the framework into the work I am doing at my day job as well (sorry that is private so no peeking).
And of course there is a whole handful of other things clambering for my attention. Hopefully, this is the best list for me to focus on and I'll be able to hold off on expanding it until I have a decent understanding of these...
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