stuffwithstuff, and how little i know
On Bob Nystrom, learning more things, and feeling embarrassed at my past work.
I discovered a great blog: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com, a programming blog written by a guy named Bob Nystrom. He works on a language I’d previously never heard of called Dart, for Google. The knowledge and expertise he exhibits blows my mind. I’m mostly blogging about this to archive it forevers (until my web host subscription runs out).
I am constantly reminded of how little I know. My two simultaneous responses are always that of becoming depressed and overwhelmed, and motivated to learn more.
Yesterday I finally hunkered down and bought the classic Head First: Design Patterns book. I’ve greatly enjoyed the Head First series. With much frustration, the Java book (plus John Purcell’s Java for Complete Beginners course) got me hitting the ground running with this cup o’ Joe language. The SQL and Software Development books were good as well. I only read about half of the Servlets and JSP book because that one seems to not have weathered the test of time in terms of technology advancement as well as the others.
I was happily surprised to find that the Design Patterns book I bought is a new 10th Anniversary Edition, just the second one after O’Reilly first released it in 2004. Yay! I don’t feel so robbed of paying full price. Just kidding. I flipped through it a little last night, excited to absorb more knowledge.
The one bad thing about reading more programming books, particularly ones on improving techniques, is I feel awful and ashamed of what I’ve written in the past, especially if that stuff was for my employers. But oh well. Odin knows bad code is rampant in even the biggest and most prestigious companies, and I want to say my code wasn’t terrible–just that it could’ve been better. I guess this is always true, though.