Becoming a better developer

Steve Clements has tagged me (thanks Steve) about how to become a better developer , he thinks tagging me ‘would make an interesting read’..Hmm, no pressure:

• Actually study for my MCPD: Enterprise Applications Developer  like I said I would. I posted earlier in the year that I was going to study for my MCPD: Enterprise Applications Developer  and that I was going to start with Exam 70–536 : TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation. Well I got 80% through the book, got board, and stopped… I even managed to get my company to buy me all of the books for the MCPD and they are just sitting on the shelve at home. I have tried to kid myself that the reason I failed was that the books are heavy, well they are, but that is no excuse, well maybe not a good one… So I resolve to pull my finger out and get reading…
• Create a final version of my TFS Event Handler system. If you read my blog, you will know that from time to time I work on a little project on CodePlex called the TFS Event Handler . I have a working prototype up, but I need to get my finger out an finish it. I will need a more powerfully laptop though, which leads me onto…
• Get a better laptop. I have been humming and hawing about getting a new laptop, one that can run TFS in a VPC. The fact is, I have no room for a desktop in my house and a laptop powerful enough for my needs will be about £3000… Which I don’t have…
• Blog about “what have I done lately”. I recently posted about what I had been doing during the last couple of weeks as I though I had not been doing much. But once I started the post I found the list of things I had been looking at, working on and subjected to just kept getting bigger. I endeavor to keep up my weekly, or biweekly update if nothing else…
• Explain Dyslexia and its benefits to a developer to anyone who will listen. I have started blogging recently about what it is like to be dyslexic and how it affects my work, both for the positive and the negative . Doing this will hopefully encourage not just budding dyslexic programmer, but anyone in jobs that require problem solving, lateral thinking, or architecture. I may be going down to London to speak at a company conference to Dyslexia on disability, so I think that would cover it…
• Join a user group. I am not sure if this would make me a better developer, but it should expose me to more developers at the same level as me. I have not met many developer who have the same avid interest in technology as me. Many developers seam to think that being a developer is just a career! Perish the thought, its more than a career, its an adventure…

Well I think that I am done…yes, I’m done…Now all that is left is to tag some people. I think I would tag Sandy Cormie and Ajay Patwari if they had blogs, but I will tag Jason Franks  because he makes me laugh, Mickey Gousset  because TFS is cool, and Mike Taulty because he is an inspired speaker who can also write code…

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