Looking back on another year

It's time for another year to come to a close at work. I've been busy all year, and I'm pleased with my personal and professional growth through the year. So now, it's time to start planning for the next year. And whatever I decide to work on, becomes my summer reading list, so this is as much career planning as it is vacation planning.

 

First and foremost, I need to keep working on the craft of programming. I've been working through some code katas online. These can run the gamut from homework questions to more realistic one-off tasks that develop over time to become an Enterprise Solution. I've found that these exercises are short enough that I can work them into my schedule, but poignant enough to stay with me after I'm done. Once I've wrapped my brain around an exercise, I'm revisiting it in F#. I'd like to get to the point where I'm seamlessly switching languages to best solve problems, so I'm working on learning a broader set of programming languages this year.

I've also been doing a lot of working in the ALM world over the past year, so I'm going to dive into all of the features of TFS 2012, (continuously updated at visualstudio.com). Any chance to go deeper on requirements elicitation and structured design through coding and unit testing, and following up with exploratory and verification testing. I do so love the art of creating software and I'll take every chance to be part of it.

What are all of you reading this summer? How are you reinvesting in your career?