27

Well, I’m 27 now. I thought I’d write a little update to my New Year’s 2011 post, to assess where I am and where I’m going. As before, if you’re interested then read on, but don’t expect any life-changing revelations or anything :)

Resolutions or whatever

The following are the headings from my 2011 post, with my thoughts/progress on each point.

Finish SICP

On my way with SICP. It’s a hard slog but enjoyable too. I really hope I can finish it this year, so I can start concentrating on other things. I’ve decided that it’s OK to skip the odd chunk of exercises.

Get a decent online portfolio

Haven’t really got anywhere with this yet, as I’ve been busy working and learning.

Keep blogging

I’ve been fairly successful with the regular blogging schedule - trying to keep to weekly posting. I’ve had some brilliant successes recently, getting onto the front page of Hacker News yesterday (a nice birthday present) AND appearing in JavaScript Weekly today.

Get some more freelance work

This is going well - given the nature of this kind of work I can’t go into great detail, but I’ve got more than enough work to be getting on with right now, so no complaints here.

Do something good in node.js/Learn a functional language

Not yet, but still hoping to find the time.

Stack Overflow

Well, I talked about the page numbers of the list of Stack Overflow numbers, but they’ve changed that now so any target based on that is a bit irrelevant now. The user pages now show a “top x% overall” reputation figure - it would be nice to get that to 1% (I’m on 2% at the moment), but I’m easy.

Nick Morgan, not just Skilldrick

This is going well. This blog comes up on page 1 of google.co.uk when searching for Nick Morgan and page 2 of google.com. Seems that putting my name in the header and sidebar worked! So a solid win there.

Etc.

I’m thinking more about the social side of things now too. I went to an excellent Code Retreat in Winchester (here’s a nice review), have been attending (and beginning to help organise) my local Ruby user group, and went along to the Bristol version of the Stack Overflow Meetup. All of these have been great ways to meet my peers, get to know some really nice people, and find out what other people are up to. The Code Retreat in particular was awesome and I’d thoroughly recommend anyone seek one out and do it. I learnt a huge amount and it’s affecting my coding constantly.

I feel a bit like I’m playing catch-up - most people my age have been doing this for way longer - but I also feel like I’m actually catching up. And I’m finally doing something that I really want to be doing. These four months have passed in no time at all, so I know it won’t be long until the end of 2011 and the start of my full-time freelance career. W00t!