New Year’s Resolutions 2008

Brian Dillard, Tuesday, January 1, 2008 @ 12:37 pm

As I've posted before, I'm pretty leery of prognostication. My colleageus Noel and Dietrich have already made their predictions for 2008, anyway (here and here) so who am I to join the fray? Instead, let me dust off another hoary device and share my programming resolutions for 2008.

• Develop in a browser other than Firefox: Now that tooling has improved in just about every major browser, the Firefox/Firebug combo is no longer the only game in town for primary development environment. I vow that Opera, Safari and IE will each serve as my development browser for at least one software project this year. Will I turn to Firefox/Firebug when the going gets tough? Sure. But by resorting to the Mozilla stalwarts only when necessary, I think I'll become a lot more intimately acquainted with the other A-grade browsers.
• Become a dedicted beta tester: Open-source and even proprietary software projects are only as good as the feedback beta testers provide their developers. In the past, I have downloaded plenty of beta software, from Firefox and other browsers to the Songbird media platform. But beta-testing is worthless if you don't file bug reports and participate actively in the process. The same goes for Ajax frameworks, IDEs and other programmer tools - not to mention draft proposals from the WC3 and other standards bodies. I resolve to give back to the software, standards and toolkit projects on which I rely by becoming a less passive participant.
• Make TDD part of my front-end programming process: Test-driven development has historically been difficult at the view layer, but tooling here has exploded over the last few years. Old habits die hard, though, and I've thus far paid only lip service to Selenium, JSUnit and their ilk. It's time to put the rubber to the road and apply the same rigor to view-layer code that my colleagues do to server-side components.
• Write more Mash Notes and fewer Ajax Interventions: From time to time I use this forum to either celebrate RIAs I love or pick apart ones I think need improvement. I've done way more of the latter than the former this year. It's easier to explain why something doesn't work than to analyze why something does. I'm going to push myself to really delve into what makes great webapps great so that I can learn from - and write about - as many positive examples as negative ones.
• Research, research, research: Luke W of Functioning Form is my hero. It's all well and good to apply abstract principles to your software design. But actual user and performance data provides far better benchmarks for improving your user experience. Luke's work with web forms takes a seemingly ho-hum staple of web development and employs user research to debunk everything you thought you knew about the subject. I aspire to be as exacting in my own development process.

And finally, one bonus, non-software resolution:

• Read more books, and I'm not talking programming manuals: It's easy to get so caught up in extending your programming skill portfolio that you forget to work other parts of your brain as well. I resolve to spend more time trawling the non-technical bookstore aisles and making a dent in my real-life reading list. Having interests outside your development environment really does make you a better programmer.

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