My goals for 2015

I now have big plans for 2015 and hope this year is as exciting as the last. In 2014 I not only learned Rails and earned a new job in that technology but I also expanded out into other things, like Ember and iOS. 

Throughout my entire journey into programming I have always had goals and even laid out my goals for 2014. In summary I completely missed the StackOverflow benchmarks I had for myself. I did however jump into iOS as planned and completed a Tetris tutorial app last month, just in time. 

My immediate goals for this year includes the following:

1. Write my first Ruby Gem

2. Complete a non-tutorial based JS app

3. Finally release Chuych to the actual users

4. Start the creation of a tutorial to share with others.

5. Begin learning Scala, Elixir, and/or Go

I am not going to break out my goals by quarter and I am avoiding StackOverflow, which is the only goals I will not be following through. I feel as if I need to complete more projects rather than spend my time diving deeper S/O. 

One mistake I feel I made a lot towards the ladder part of 2014 is spending way too much time in books and videos and not actually writing code. I hope to change that with these goals I have laid out. I am also aiming to be realistic with these goals, which means I expand on to #5 as I plan on completing all of these goals this year. This is definitely going to be a good year for me and I am excited to move into another level of programming.

What are your goals for 2015?

My realistic and obtainable goals for the new year

I am not one to set resolutions for New Year, not because I don't want to buy into the hype of setting goals and never obtaining them, but because I have bought into the hype and hipster logic that its cool not to buy into it...

This year will be slightly different though, actually a lot different. This year I am coming into 2014 with goals already in place and I thought it would be best to utilize this blog as a bit of accountability. Below I will list the goals for next year in relation to programming and where I would like to be. Some goals will be easier than others, but I believe the importance of setting realistic goals for my journey will be a key to my success, even if I miss them.

I have laid out each goal by the quarter I would like to achieve it; only because that is the way my works. This quarter goals start out as as easy but will become more aggressive as I hope to gain more experience as time goes on. I will also leave one for a buffer (trying to realistic and obtainable). I have notice some job description asking for Stack Overflow profiles, more for the Senior Roles. I see an importance in being able to learn by teaching and answering questions for other programmers. I also want to eventually contribute to Rails and other frameworks, either creating tutorials or even helping the open source project. *I really want to be somebody when I grow up :) I also plan to learn Objective C and iOS to complement my web app learning. I have 2-3 actual ideas of full fledge web apps and would love to build a big audience of users through iOS.

Jan - March - 5th month into learning - Taking it easy on the goals and focusing on learning

1. Complete Bloc and have 5 completed Ruby on Rails functional apps in my Github.
2. Continue work on my capstone project by collaborating with fellow Rubyist on ideas. 
3. Contribute to at least 5 Stack Overflow Questions - Obtain a score of at least 30.
4. Become more confident in Javascript and it's frameworks
5. Starting in March begin publish 1-2 mini web app projects a month

April - June - More aggressive goals since I would like to have a new job by then.

1. Obtain at least 3 interview with companies for Rails specific jobs. 
2. Begin Pair programming on a project
3. Contribute to 25 total Stack Overflow Questions
4. Contribute to an open source project in some way
5. Launch my first web app to the public.
6. Start as a Web Developer 
7. Share a Rails tutorial I have created from scratch

July - September 

1. Begin researching  and coming up with ideas on how to contribute to the rails framework
2. Mentor another beginner
3. Launch second full web app
4. Share another tutorial I will create.
5. Begin learning Objective C and iOS programming

October - December
(1 year of learning completed)

1. Contribute to Rails in some way.
2. Launch a third full app using rails
3. Answer 75 Stack Overflow questions. 
4. Have an iOS app built
5. Have at least 20 mini apps completed and submitted to my github.

*I have made a pubilc gist to keep track of this. This is living list, I will make additions and deletions to the gist if needed, but the ultimate foal is to become a decent web developer.