What A Diffrince A Year Makes

In January I posted up my new years list basically, stuff I wanted to learn in the last twelve months. Lets take a quick look at last years goals.

SQL Server Stuff

1. Partitioning

Win

Done, and pretty early on. I did a lot of reading and did some partitioning setups in my home lab and feel much better about partitioning.

2. Change Data Capture

Draw

This was a business need. At my old company we were using triggers everywhere and CDC seemed like a good fit for most of that. I did some reading and test setups but didn’t get much farther than that. Not a 100% win but I did learn stuff.

3. Replication

Win

Ongoing, since I’ve changed jobs replication moved up on the list as CDC fell down the list. I’ve geared back up and feel like I am back on solid ground.

4. Analysis Services Administration

Fail

Again, casualty of moving jobs. I have ZERO interaction with Analysis Services and as such, didn’t do much on this front.

.Net Programming Stuff

1.LINQ

Draw

I did do some stuff with the more general LINQ to objects and now that I have moved jobs I actually have more exposure to LINQ so I’ll get to learn more in the new year.

2.Parallel Programming in .Net

Draw

Didn’t do much with PLINQ but did work a bit with the new async framework stuff. My biggest complement is it isn’t horrible. I don’t think it is as slick as say node.js but it is light years ahead of the early 2.0 days and threading.

3.Entity Framework

FAIL

Just couldn’t do it. Partly due to the job change and partly due to complete lack of caring. I just can’t get jazzed up about it. I’ve worked with a lot of ORM’s and they all have strengths and weaknesses.

90 Degrees From Center

1. Get Better With Python

Win

I did a few little things in Python on a few different platforms like the Google App Engine. I mostly use it at home. There is a large user base and it does make lots of programming tasks much easier so I’ll hang on to Python for a while longer.

2. Pick Up Lisp again

EPIC FAIL

I spent about two days banging on Lisp again and realized why I don’t use Lisp today. There just isn’t enough support for it in the wild. There are lots of flavors and variations on Lisp but to gain any real proficiency you really need to focus on one dialect and master it. I just couldn’t find one and settle. Eventually, that time popped over to Python.

Changes, Changes and Changes

This seems to be a constant in my life. Admittedly most of that is self inflicted but I wasn’t expecting the amount of stuff to happen to me personally or professionally this year.

Lets make the short list:

New House

New Job

Spoke at SQLRally

Pulled off SQLSaturday #97

MVP

Spoke at PASS Summit

yep, crazy year but a good one for sure.

Thank You

I don’t say that enough. The community has been great to me this year and I can’t wait to see what next year holds!

See you next year!