Another Year. Another Year's Checklist!

Ahhh yes… Another year! Another fresh start and set of goals for the year. So many good intentions.

On this blog I try to detail my meandering adventures in technology, so I thought I'd write up the tech-subjects I've had in the back of my mind but never got around to looking into.

You never know, maybe this is the year I can tick some of them off!!

Truth be told, I have had this laundry list of things-to-do-and-learn swirling around my head from last year. And maybe the year before as well.


  • C++ 17 will be released this year. I've been keeping up with all the new toys that have been added to the language since C++11. Even though I don't code in C++ anymore (C# is my daily driver) I still have a fondness for C++. It would be good to have a refresher on some of the newer language features.

    Although, it seems like C++20 is going to be the BIG release with modules (finally) and async/await billed as features!

  • Install and play with .NET Core on Linux and port a simple application. .NET Core 1.0 was released last year and I have not yet played with it. Although in my defense they do say to wait until version 2 of a product. You know, for the bigger bugs to be ironed out.

  • Install Linux (again) on one of my machines!! If I am going to test and play with .NET Core I will need to have Linux anyway. Is this the year I finally say goodbye to Windows? I say this every year. And the answer is always no! I love Visual Studio too much!

  • Take a look at the Nim Programming Language. There was a time when I wanted to check out Lua. That urge has now been replaced by Nim.

  • I have had an idea for a side-project for ages. This project would be a "Windows Explorer IMDB Overlay" over the filesystem and would link to IMDB. This TMDbLib API looks like it will do just the job. Its an API for the themoviedb

  • I would like to play around with SkiaSharp and UrhoSharp. They are both graphics libraries. Skia is a C++ open source 2D graphics library and is used in Chrome, Firefox, Android etc. SkiaSharp is a C# port. Urho3D is a cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine. UrhoSharp is a port to C#
    • .
  • Pay some attention to my Amazon EC2 instance. I have a server idling in the sky and it would be good to do something useful with it.

  • Think of an IoT project to do on my Raspberry Pi 2 device. I did have an idea to try and link up my go-pro to it. I did find a website that detailed the go-pro wifi commands and thier general query structure.

  • Play more xbox! (Why isn't this top of the list?)

  • Read up on algorithms.

  • Read the book CODE by Charles Petzold. It's an old book but it's supposed to be a nice walk through of the basic concepts of computers. I've been meaning to read it for ages now.

  • That reminds me! Read more books. I already have an Audible account but I need to set aside more time to physically read. You know. The old-fashioned way. :)

  • Re-Install and play with Gimp and Blender (...Again, hopefully this time I will grok them)

  • I've been meaning to look into Vue.js and Ractive.js. They are both light HTML templating engines and they both use moustache style templating. They both look good and if I ever do a client-side web project I hope to look into these.

  • Play around with PostgreSQL.. I use SQLServer daily and am very adept with it but I have never used PostgreSQL which is just as capable. There is a windows version of the database here. I can't believe the download is only 137MB. In comparison, the download for SQL Server Management Studio (just the interface) is knocking on a gigabyte!

  • On a side note (while were talking of databases), try to think more "set based" than "procedural based" when writing SQL queries. Why do I always think in cursors instead of set based operations? Damn my imperative mind!

  • Finish off my Xamarin side-project and post it on my GitHub. Or at the very least post what I have done so far.

  • Python. If I need to knock up a quick throw-away script (say to do something with the filesystem) I want to try and remember to use Python (just to keep my toe in).

  • Take another look at TypeScript now its reached 2.1! Version 2.1 now compiles async/await code down to EcmaScript 3 without needing Babel! Yay!

  • Take a look at the Kotlin Programming Language! Apparently you can write Android apps in it now!

  • Unity can run on all platforms but can you use it for a line of business app? Probably not, but the scripting language they use is C# and it would be interesting to dig into.

  • .NET Standard 2.0 is due to come out this year (apparently when Visual Studio 2017 drops). I deffo want to play with this. Is it the future of .NET?

So there it is. In short, I seem to have a lot of spinning plates of "things I hope to get around to do/read up on/investigate". There’s a lot out there to learn. I guess that's one of the reasons I have a not-to-do list!


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