Retrospective of 2011, Looking Ahead to 2012

Yep, that time of the year again. Shiny new calendars and the accompanying festivities are upon us again. I can?t get rid of the feeling that every year passes by a lot faster than the year before. This year was definitely not an exception in that regard and I?m afraid that things are not going to improve in 2012.  

Nonetheless, a lot of stuff happened this year, good and not so good. First of all, I changed jobs twice this year. I?ve been working at iChoosr for a couple of months now and it still feels like I?ve finally come home. I really enjoy working there, my colleagues are awesome folks and I learned a ton already. I do hope to have at least the same amount of fun next year.

While enjoying my .NET job during the day, I?ve been doing a lot of Node.js hacking in my spare time, which you could probably tell looking the amount of blog posts I?ve been writing on this topic this year. This has all been a lot of good fun. I have a couple of more blog posts on Node.js lined up for next year, so stay tuned.

The new programming language I learned this year was CoffeeScript, which looks a lot like Ruby. Unfortunately, Ruby is still on my wish list for new programming languages to learn as is Clojure and/or Scala. I wonder which of these I?m going to pick up in 2012?

One of the things that I?m eager to learn about is another operating system. I?ve been soaking in a lot of Unix/Linux stuff during the last couple of months. I?ve been using and developing software for the Windows platform like forever and learning an entire new OS has not been easy. But I must say that it?s well worth the time and effort. I?ve been developing Node.js libraries and applications in my spare time entirely on Ubuntu and I?m looking forward to take a peek at Linux Mint as well. Perhaps I?ll completely switch over to Linux next year, I?m not entirely sure about that yet.

I?ve been facilitating a good number of European VAN sessions throughout the year. 2011 has been the third year for the E-VAN and I must say that it?s been a fun ride. But I do feel that the time has come for me to move on. I must admit that I only opened Visual Studio a couple of times in my spare time, and then only by accident. Being really honest with myself, I?m just not that interested anymore in the latest and greatest in the .NET space compared to only a couple of years ago. I think I somehow hit a saturation point. So I?m no longer going to organize and/or host new E-VAN sessions. I?ll be more than happy to pass the torch to other developers out there who are willing to step up to the plate. I hereby want to thank all the speakers and those who contributed in the discussions for all their efforts. The recordings are still there and I do hope many folks were able to learn something. I know I most certainly did.

Having a job closer to home and also being able to work from home at least once a week ensures that I?m able to spend more time with my family. I?m probably most thankful for that. Working out has been a lot of fun this year as well. I was able to drastically improve myself by running longer distances and also running a lot faster. I?m planning to participate in even more street runs during the next year. I?m looking forward to sustainably improve even further without overloading my body. This is definitely one of the biggest challenges for the upcoming year. 

All that?s left for me here is to wish you all the best for the new year!

Until next year.