Book – Code Complete 2nd Edition

In the last few month’s I’ve bought some books to help me improve as a developer. One of them is Code Complete 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell. It is full of best practices, practical suggestions and methods for either a new developer or a veteran in software development.

I’ve not yet completed reading the entire book (it’s quite a thick book) so I will review the book in the near future.

Learning

I’ve decided to pick up my quest for certification and try to get a Microsoft certificate for ASP.NET 3.5 Application Development. I already have an certificate for Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation (70-536). So the upcoming months I will focus my spare time to studying for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development (70-562) exam.

I already have the book so it’s just a matter of time before I’ve worked through all the exercises.

Improving as a developer

The IT business is changing and developing rapidly. As a developer, it requires a lot of effort to keep up with the latest technology. When I look at my own situation, being an ASP.NET developer, I often think about becoming a ‘better’ developer and what steps I need to take to keep up with the constantly changing and evolving IT business.

Step 1: Start listening to Podcasts

Since 2 years I’ve started listening to technology podcasts (.NET Rocks, Hanselminutes, Herding Code, Security Now! and The Stackoverflow Podcast). I have quite a long commute (2,5 hours per day, depending on the traffic it might be up to 4 hours) so listening to podcasts is a nice distraction when being stuck in a traffic jam.

Step 2: Start reading Blogs

About the same time I started listening to podcasts, I’ve subscribed to several blogs using Google Reader. My normal working day starts with reading some blog posts. By doing this I learn a lot about new technologies, and what people are working on.

Step 3: ‘Adopt’ a open source project

By taking the two steps I’ve described above, I feel much more up-to-date with what’s going on in the world of technology. Still I feel something is missing.

After reading an inspiring blog post by Phil Haack, I came to the conclusion that I am ready to take the ‘next step’. In this post, Phil talks about a person who contacted him and asked how he [Phil] became such a successful developer and what steps he had taken to become who he is now. A quote from his blog post:

If one thing in my career has paid dividends, it was getting involved with open source projects. It exposed me to such a diverse set of problems and technologies that I wouldn’t normally get a chance to work on at work.

What’s next?

Ok so I’ve decided to get involved with a open source project. Phil hints to his own project in his blog post.

Perhaps it is a good idea to look around and see what there is and what seems interesting to me.

In the following blog posts I will be discussing several open source project which of one I will probably adopt.

Updates #2

I’ve added a new section called “Tools”. You can go there by clicking the “Tools” tab on top of this blog. Feel free to leave a comment to suggest a new tool for me to try and if I like it, I will add it to the list!

Updates

I’ve added information to the “About me” page and updated the default WordPress Theme by changing the image. It’s a panoramic photo of Zutphen, my home town.

Testing Windows Live Writer

Since I’m still figuring out how to come up with a decent update schedule I am also looking for a publishing tool to easily write my blog posts in. Today I’m trying Windows Live Writer.

My first impressions are very positive. Live Writer supports a lot of blog engines.
It has a clean interface with lots of possibilities to add links, images, movies and much more to your blog post.
You can extend Live Writer by adding plug-ins for example if you want to have code highlighting (when writing a technical message) in your post.
One cool feature is the tabbed interface. You can write your blog post in ‘edit’ mode and can take a look in the ‘preview’ window, which renders the blog post as if it’s already on your blog. For hardcore HTML editing it’s also possible to switch to ‘source’. Concepts can be automatically saved, your blog post can be categorized, tagged and it’s even possible to set a publication date, if you want to stick to a certain schedule.

All in all a nice tool which I’m definitely going to use when writing my ramblings on this blog.