which were your achievements in programming in 2008?

Question

which were your achievements in programming in 2008? what technologies surprise you or learn this year and what do you expect in programming terms in 2009

Edit: Changed to Wiki

Answer 1

I decided I would learn a new language, nothing specific at the time, since then I have learned Python.

This coming year, I would like to learn another language, preferably something like c++ or maybe just maybe (I'm a *nix kinda' guy) Ill try a Microsoft stack with something like .net but we'll see what happens.

Answer 2

Improved interviewing skills. I am now better able to discern good and bad applicants through better questions, including small whiteboard coding sessions.

Answer 3

I am up to speed with Drupal, though lots still to learn. First time really working with a good framework.

2009, maybe i'll get around to doing some lisp funness

Answer 4

I opened myself to the world of Dynamic Languages and Functional Languages. I can read programs that dont resemble a C++ or C# kind of code with {} and ;. In the process developed better understanding to patterns like MVC.

Answer 5

1. I wrote 2 VB.NET language features that will ship as part of VS 2010.

2. I designed a programing language called Liberty,

   However, I've only implemented a small fraction of it. I stopped working on it so that I could concentrate on building a profitable software company. My original intent was to market the language (actually an IDE for it) as my first product, but the economics of programing languages being as they are, I decided to pick something else for my company's first product. I've been thinking about turning it into an open source project. If the statement "A programing language that feels like LISP, but looks like C#..." has any appeal to you, and you are interested in working on an open source .NET compiler, let me know.

3. I started my own software company

4. I've designed and implemented most of my company's first product "Transactor Code Agent", which should be shipping in Q1 2009. I've been billing it as a "Disaster Recovery Tool for Programmers".

   It's a tool that provides automatic local version history for source code. You point it at the folders that contain your source, and then anytime you make a change to file it automatically creates a backup for you. It's meant to be a compliment to existing source control setups, by protecting all the "broken", "in-progress" work that you usually don't check into source control.

   By the way, we are looking for beta-testers. If you are interested let me know.

Answer 6

I needed to learn PF early this December as our existing firewall solution was woefully underpowered for an industrial application, but we didn't have the dough for the "professional" solutions (i.e. ci$cso stuff).

So I ended up taking my existing OpenBSD box in the server stack and turn it into the firewall using PF. Since the system uses multiple servers and multiple IP's (some on domains), I needed a combination of NAT, RDR and the usual RULES.

It's certainly not as sexy as learning APL or LISP (or Ruby etc.) for fun, but it was necessary and urgent.

The new firewall is performing beautifully and I don't have to reset the horrid little firewall appliances twice a week anymore (which had to be done remotely which also was not fun). :-)

Cheers,

-Richard

Answer 7

Well, I've builded a big site (for some project) and learned java, now I want to learn C for coming year.

Answer 8

1. I released my first program into the wild world of the Internet.

2. I went outside my .NET bubble by creating the previously mentioned program in Objective-C.

Answer 9

After Scott's outing I would feel deep shame in confessing what I achieved in 2008.

Answer 10

I built a pretty cool string extractor utility and corresponding processing library to facilitate automatic localization of string resources in a native C++ application without refactoring the code to extract the strings from where they were used, with the added benefit of allowing cross-language string pooling of localized strings.

I also built a cool operator_cast<> function (with some help from the SO community) to help codify programming intent when using custom casting operators.

Answer 11

For the first time, I sold my work to a general audience, via the App Store. In so doing, I:

• Reached over five times as many users as my most widely-used previous work (26000+ instead of 5000+)
• Made more than three times as much money as my most lucrative previous work (a Google Summer of Code grant in 2005)
• Learned two new environments (Objective-C/Cocoa Touch and Ruby/Rails) after sticking with Perl for many years
• Disciplined myself enough to get the boring bits done
• Learned what it meant to be responsible to thousands of people

But perhaps most importantly, I made beautiful things that I could be proud of.

In 2009 (or maybe late '08) I'll release a new product that I hope will push all of that even farther, and maybe even be a best-in-class solution for a problem everybody faces.

Answer 12

1- I made changes to a International Wine Contest Software that i previously wroted. it was changed because the a new sponsor have a different logic in the contest we were notified about the changes 3 days before, so a friend and I code like 2 days in a row,literally running from work to the contest in order to provide support. at the end everything was Flawless

2.- Released my first program for Sales and inventory for Video game retailer

3.- Start my Coding Blog

both in .Net of Course

Answer 13

1. Helped push another release towards the door (not quite there yet)
2. Presented a paper on accelerating the Hough Transform at WorldComp
3. Averaged just shy of one blog post per week
4. Built up hope of catching John Skeet in reputation
5. Did a huge set of bizarro work with reflection and dynamic code generation
6. Gave up all hope of catching John Skeet in reputation
7. Managed three employees, more or less successfully

Answer 14

I made one of my "flagship" applications better by removing features from it.