Simon Willison’s Weblog

Targets for 2004

1st January 2004

Looking back on 2003, one thing really stuck out for me: I didn’t learn a new programming language. The Pragmatic Programmers recommend learning at least one new language every year, and I’ve heard similar advice from other notable authorities; Ruby’s Matz made a similar point in an article published just the other day.

I learned a number of new skills and technologies in 2003, and improved on my existing knowledge in more ways than I can count. Unfortunately, everything was building on stuff I already had experience with: I didn’t really learn anything completely new.

2004 will be very different, mainly because I will finally have access to a Mac. Objective C and AppleScript are both on my list, and I’m looking forward to doing some serious messing around with GUIs as well.

Other than that, my two main geeky goals for this year are to become more active in the open source world (hopefully contributing some useful code) and to do a lot more writing outside of my blog. On a personal note, I plan to see at least some of America outside of Kansas. I’m only here until October and I want to make the most of it.