Well, if nothing else, I'll reply to this with my Perl resolutions for the New Year so that they're "in writing". :)
For 2001, in Perl, and as a programmer/wannabe hacker in general I resolve to (in no particular order):
- Join an interesting free software project (something that I think is neat, that is also a piece of software I'll use when all is said and done)
- Submit a useful module to CPAN
- Ensure that I read every piece of relevant documentation I can find before accidentally expecting that someone should repeat the FAQ to me (I basically do make sure I've read everything I can think of already, but I want to make more a point of it from now on anyways)
- Ensure that the advice I give as a programmer to a programmer is precise and helpful (again, this is basically something I do already, save for the odd time where I do admit to making "general" types of comments in subject areas for which I might not have very much background in)
- Become more "active" in my role as a software user. This would include becoming an active bug reporter/fixer, and not being afraid to voice my opinion to vendors/other programmers/hackers about things I don't like or do like in their software, and heck, maybe even doing something about it myself! :)
- Help others out more on clpmisc and here when I am smart enough to do so :) I admit that a lot of what I do is "lurking" with not enough giving answers to questions for which I know the answer
- Get better at being truly lazy (always grep, never repeat a task where a piece of code could do it for me, never type more than I need to, never ever write code for tasks that somebody wrote a module for already, etc)
- Avoid engaging in flame wars, especially language wars. The right tool for the right job!
It's a fairly big list, but many of these can be done concurrently and work together.
And for the record, I'm going to link to this node from my home node so that fellow monks can check back with each other 3-4-6 months from now and see how we're all progressing :)
