I’m quite a bit late to setting my goals for the year. Yikes, March arrived so quickly. I wanted to take some time to put on paper (digital paper) what technologies I’m wanting to explore this year. Although I already shared some habits I’m working on, I didn’t really cover anything I want to accomplish in software. So for this post, I will be sharing a comprehensive list of every technology that I’m wanting to learn this year. I don’t believe that I’ll be able to accomplish every item on the list, because it may be too much. But I would rather be hopeful.
I’m going to break each technology down into categories that I think make the most sense and share each technology within them. I will also share my motivation for learning them and maybe some ways I’ll go about using them in projects. If you want to follow my learning on any of this, I keep most of my repos public on my GitHub. Lastly, these aren’t in any order, other than the categories I thought to group them in. Languages felt like a natural place to start, followed by web technologies, and ending with tools and miscellaneous items.
๐คฌ Language Technology
The first type of technology that I want to add to my repertoire is languages. Since I started programming, I’ve had the opportunity to use a lot of great languages, spending most of my time with: JavaScript, PHP, Elixir, Elm, C#, and other web languages (HTML, CSS, etc). Because I have spent a lot of time in the front-end in the last two years, I would like to focus my attention on more application or back-end technologies.
๐งช Elixir
This one is a bit of an oddball. I actually started learning Elixir back in 2020 and am using it in my full-time position at InfluxData/InfluxDB. In this time it has quickly become one of my favorite languages to use. If you aren’t already familiar, Elixir is a language built on top of the Erlang language and its VM, BEAM. Elixir is a functional programming language, which helps to write more reliable code because all functions are pure and data is immutable. I’ve also had the opportunity to build some apps that were able to process a large amount of data concurrently because of Elixir’s processes. I really can’t say enough about how awesome of a language it is. On top of that, it just has a nice syntax.
I’m putting it on the list because I still feel like I have a lot to learn in terms of architecting an application and using the common libraries for the language. This year I would like to spend some more time with the Phoenix framework and build some applications using Phoenix’s LiveView. I think LiveView has a good shot of replacing JavaScript in some applications, so I would love to get my hands on it.
โ๏ธ Rust
I first heard about Rust from a blog post by Discord. I honestly don’t know that much about Rust, considering how much I’ve heard about it. The ecosystem and dev tooling appear to be excellent. But mostly, I have heard that the compiler is extremely helpful and friendly. I’ve become accustomed to the errors provided by the Elm compiler; getting that on the backend sounds great. It’s not a functional language, but it does promise reliability through a strict type system and memory management.
I’ll likely try Rust on a web project first. It is supposed to have good WASM support, so I’ll definitely try a project with that. After that, I’d like to give it a go with a hardware project. In college, I studied Electrical & Computer Engineering, and I’ve had an itch to apply some of that knowledge to something physical. At this point, I think I’ll create a device for performing music. I may give a go at writing rust for Arduino. Honestly, a better language that worked well with lower-level and hardware technology would be nice.
ฦ Haskell
Haskell is a bit of a stretch goal. But, since I love Elm so much, it seems natural to learn the language the compiler is written in. Haskell is a statically-typed, functional language. No other language gives me the confidence in deployment like Elm does. And I’m hoping Haskell will give me the same confidence because it also makes you handle all side-effects.
I would like to try a Haskell web project, which will mostly likely be a game. I anticipate it working extremely well for an event-driven game. Elm will almost certainly be the front-end. I think its animation support is incredible. So we’ll see how this one goes. It’s a wishlist thing to learn, so fingers-crossed, I’ll be able to learn it. ๐ค
๐ Web Technology
This next category has two web technologies that I’ve dipped my toes in, but haven’t had the opportunity to use in a real application. I work as a software engineer, and have been deeply involved in web development for more than decade. I’m neglecting WASM from this list of technology, because I don’t plan on investing a lot of time into that, specifically. However, I think it’s likely that I’ll use it while working with Phoenix, Haskell, and maybe Rust.
๐ Websockets
Websockets are the future. Or so I’ve been told ๐. Websockets, if you’re not already familiar, break the HTTP request/response lifecycle by allowing two-way communication. With websockets, messages can now be sent from the from the server to the client and handled in a callback. I’ve had the opportunity to use them in some experiments. But I’ve never used them in a production application.
I’m hoping to get some experience using Websockets this year. I’ll most likely be using Phoenix Sockets in Elixir, since that’s where I’ll be spending the bulk of my time. I think an interesting app to develop would be something with a shopping cart, so that I can send pricing updates to the clients. Alternatively, I might look into a chat application. I do think they would be a valuable tool to get some experience with, so if you have any ideas, please let me know!
๐ฑ Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are a really cool technology. I used them for the first time in 2021 after hearing a talk by lemon at a conference. Until then, I hadn’t realized how far browser support had come. My coworker and I went back to our hotel room and immediately gave a go at converting an existing website to a PWA. It proved to be fairly easy to get past the initial steps. We quickly made a web app installable and to include some assets to be cached locally.
This yeah, I’m hoping to get to develop an app into a PWA with more extensive features. The primary feature I want to get experience with is queuing updates to be sent to the server while offline. I haven’t done a lot of state management with IndexedDB, but I’m going to want to figure that out quickly.
At one point, my personal website was a PWA and I’m going to try to get that back to being one. I have another blog where I talk about Tacos and it’s PWA written in Elm. I would like to update some features on that blog to work better for offline (like comments). If I do get the opportunity to work on a game, I might see about getting it published on the Microsoft Store and/or Google Play.
๐ Tools & Misc Technology
This is a bit of a bucket of the other things i want to learn. I will probably learn both of these while working on another skill. And with any luck, I’ll be able to use some of them as part of my job.
๐ Tailwind CSS
Back in the day, I just had CSS. After a while, I finally got SASS, which felt like a miracle. I come from the old days of floating elements and praying. Honestly, although I’ve become familiar with the new features in CSS as they appear, I haven’t picked up any new CSS tooling since SASS. I have tried bootstrap a few times throughout the years, but it never really stuck. It seems like Tailwind has been generating a lot of buzz and I think their website is pretty. And having a pretty website can get me to do just about anything.
Tailwind CSS will likely find its way into one of my projects while learning another language. I think if I make a fun app or static website to learn Rust or Phoenix LiveView, I could pop it in. I’m somewhat hopeful that I’ll fall for it with all of my heart. But even if not, I might just get some inspiration in design.
โฑ InfluxDB + Telegraf
This probably deserves to be a bit higher on this list. My employer, InfluxData, develops the leading time-series database. A time-series database (TSDB) is a database purpose-built for timestamped data. We have a cool page about it here, if you want to learn more. I work on the E-Commerce team, so I don’t spend time with InfluxDB for work. However, I have a project idea involving my thermostat that will require a lot of timestamped data. While I probably could get by with a SQL or JSON db, I think a TSDB is serves analytics-style data really well.
InfluxData also develops the open source project Telegraf. Telegraf works as an ingest for a TSDB. Telegraf can even be used with other TSDBs, other than InfluxDB. I’ve actually had the opportunity to work with it once, and I found the experience to be really easy. I was able to authentication against an OAuth API, refresh the token, and pull data all with a single config file. It’s pretty sick!
๐ Learning Technology Conclusion
Wish me luck! Again, I don’t believe I’ll be able to learn all of these, but I’m hoping to at least learn more about each of them. I imagine that new technologies and tools will present themselves as I continue learning. If something useful presents itself, I’ll work on that, of course.
Thanks so much for reading! Again, you can follow my learning over on my GitHub and sometimes on my twitter, @abshierjoel!
– Joel Abshier
January has already slipped out of our hands, as have most of our New Year’s resolutions and habit goals. The momentum and excitement around our ambitious goals that were flooding our timelines not long ago have vanished. Maybe you were part of this annual movement and had your own collection of dreams to reach this year; and just maybe you’re on course; or perhaps you’re already a month into stopping trying. While I’ve never been much for New Year’s Resolutions, I’m no stranger to setting goals and not quite reaching them. But I’m hoping for something different this year.
โ Last Year’s Goals
Last year, during February and March I set out to build better habits in my life: eating well, exercising, reading, waking up early, etc. I decided not to focus on big goals, but instead to focus on being consistent with what I call the doing of the habit. In this process of this, I kept hearing about this book called Atomic Habits from a bunch of productivity Youtubers. Curious enough, I picked it up. I ended up reading it twice last year and applied one of the book’s main ideas to my habit building. James Clear, the author, suggests building systems, rather than setting goals, which is the path I had started down already. And although I did have several failures, I consider this as one of the best years for accomplishing personal goals.
Some of those goals, like having a more regular sleep schedule and eating better went exceptionally well. Exercising regular went very well for the summer months, but once November rolled around and it got cold, this fell off the rails and I have yet to pick it backup. And although I did read a lot more than I have in years past, I often would miss several consecutive weeks before picking a book back up. In the Spring I also picked up recording cover songs and uploading them to my YouTube channel. I stuck with this pretty consistent up until October, where my time became a bit more limited. During this time I changed jobs, and made an intentional decision to take a break.
๐ Looking At This Year
So overall it was a really successful year, but it still had its failures. This year, I am hoping to set some more specific goals and stick to them. I would like to be a year where I can explore some more creative avenues – music & writing in particular; this blog is part of that goal. I’ve considered focusing on just One Thing, but in my current situation, it makes sense to break it out into a few habits. To help me build these habits, I will continue to focus on systems. But I will also tie these systems to some “recurring goals.” I hope these goals will provide me some excitement to keep working towards building these systems. The three areas I’m hoping to build habits in are Writing, Finances, and Music. Let’s break down how I hope to accomplish this.
โ Writing
Habit: Write daily through blogging and Object Writing
Recurring Goals: Publish at least a monthly blog post on here or Taco Tandem
I’ve never considered myself to be a good writer. Back in school and university, I had to build myself up to writing because I had so much dread. Funny enough, even though I hated it so much, once I would start writing, I could often find myself writing far longer papers than required. I would reach a flow state and the words came easily to me. Outside of this, I’ve always enjoyed writing songs, but have often found myself to go through phases. I can write a lot of songs one month, but then go through a 6-month drought where I can’t write a single lyric.
The motivation behind this goal is to break that drought. I love songwriting and would really like to make it something I can do more regularly (more on this later). Additionally, I would really like to start sharing some of my life and the things I learn online. I think that blogging is the best application for this, which is why you’re reading this today. Since I started my other blog, Taco Tandem, I find that I can enjoy writing a lot, given the right context. And although I haven’t written much for this blog yet, I’ve really enjoyed the posts I have made.
The Writing Habit
The habit I would like to build is daily writing. I believe will improve my ability to express my thoughts and stories. I also believe that the more regularly I can do this, the more I will enjoy the hobby. A few years back I read the book Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Patterson. It’s an incredible book that provides a great tool call Object Writing. Object writing is a writing exercise where you’re given a random word and you write for 10 minutes straight, stopping immediately when the timer rings. During this time, you are allowed to take your writing any direction, but are encouraged to tap into the seven senses: sound, smell, touch, taste, sight, kinetic, and internal/organic. I will use this exercise combined with writing for this blog to help me build this habit.
๐ฐ Investing
Habit: Watch + Understand Stock Markets and Invest Regularly
Goal: Invest a large portion of income in 401k, Roth IRA, or index funds
Money is a weird topic for me. Though I don’t remember being taught this, the subject always has seemed a bit taboo to discuss. However, over this past year I’ve been working to educate myself better on saving and investing. I’ve never been one for budgeting or making a financial plan, but I have always leaned towards being conservative with spending while saving as much as possible.
At the job I started in 2020, they offered a 401(k) match up to 5%, so I decided to take full advantage of it, since it is basically free money for saving that. Since that time I have been keeping up with a 401(k) as well as investing in a Roth IRA. I made these choices somewhat blindly, but afterwards starting to research more about investing. This was the first time I took the time to watch markets and learn about movement. It has been a weird time to get involved in investing, given the chaotic behavior of the market since the start of the pandemic.
The Investing Habit
This year, I would like to build a better habit of watching the markets and studying their behavior better. My goal isn’t necessarily to try to time anything to buy stocks, but just to build more intuition about the market’s behavior. I also want to build a habit of investing regularly. I’m fairly new to investing, so I believe index funds are the safest way to put money in and leave it for the future. My 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions come out at every paycheck, but I am manually investing every quarter. I believe this will let me get involved in the market, but also try to take advantage of small dips in a fund, on any given week. This might be foolish to try to time it, but for the most part, I’m planning on putting the same amount in 4 times this year.
The goal is pretty vague here, but I would like to invest a very large portion of what I make into savings. Right now, I’m set to invest around 20% and am undecided about how to save the remaining amount. As I learn more, I’ll be sharing my plans here on this blog, so stay tuned. ๐
๐ Music
Habit: Build a daily habit of object writing and practice new music weekly
Goal 1: Publish original songs on Spotify/Amazon Music
Goal 2: Continue uploading cover songs on my YouTube channel
As I mentioned before, last year I started regularly uploading cover songs to my YouTube channel. I have found the process of arranging music and recording songs to be extremely rewarding. While making each song, I usually run into a few new issues that inspire new ideas. I enjoy the process of making music as well as the videography required to put together the songs. Each song required several camera angles, so I can get lost in the edit for quite a while.
I would like to rebuild the habit of uploading cover songs to that channel. Although I don’t expect that I’ll be able to release songs weekly, as my channel banner promises, it’s something I want to carve out time to accomplish. I would also like to record my own music to publish to streaming platforms like Spotify & Amazon Music.
The Music Habit
The hard thing about these habits is that it seems impossible for me to put a time on how long it takes to finish a song. Sometimes I can knock out the instrumentation in a few short hours, whereas other times it takes a few evenings. Then recording and editing the video can also vary greatly in timing. This makes it hard to set any specific goals, so I’m focusing on just making it regular. As a rough idea, I would like to put out about an album’s length of original songs over the course of the year (though I will release them all as singles). So hopefully 9-12 songs will be out on streaming services along with a collection of new covers on YouTube.
๐ Wish Me Luck
So, that’s the plan! It’s hard to judge at this point what I’m going to be able to accomplish, but I’m hoping that by writing it down and publishing it, it’ll give me a kick to keep going on all of these. If you have any strategies, book recommendations, or encouragement, I’d love to hear it in the comments below! Wish me luck! ๐ค