Resolutions for programmers

Learn Dvorak - I'd warn against bothering with Dvorak. Huge time sink with dubious claims of speed improvements. While a mythical programmer may exist who feels his raw typing speed limits his productivity, I never met that unicorn. While learning you have an increased error rate, run into incompatibility with other programmers and programs (emacs or vim... good luck) and end up needing to defend something no one actually cares about.<p>Back Up Your Data - I'd argue the resolution should be "Restore Your Data". Everyone has "backups" but that doesn't mean they have a valid restore procedure that they know works.<p>I like the list overall. It definitely has some interesting suggestions. The dominant arm in a sling sounds fun.

Most "list" posts suck; this one was awesome.<p>My only quibble: "Argue against something you believe" is not a special, part-time exercise. It should be a tightly-integrated element of your ongoing mindset, even in 'damn the torpedoes' dev mode.

I'd like to add a caveat to the "Implement a cryptosystem" suggestion--Implement one, but DO NOT USE IT. It's a fun challenge, but only fools use their own crypto libraries.

For anyone who takes him up on his Datalog suggestion, this (<a href="http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ramsdell/tools/datalog/datalog.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ramsdell/tools/datalog/datalog.h...</a>) is a pretty good standalone implementation. Free (LGPL), in a mix of C and Lua.<p>For Prolog, try GProlog (<a href="http://www.gprolog.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gprolog.org/</a>) - it has good constraint programming support.

I have a couple of contrary suggestions with respect to health.<p><pre><code> 1. Don't follow the conventional wisdom on RSI </code></pre> I struggled with RSI for years, and did all the usual things (warmups, exercises, braces, a Kinesis with modified key layout, etc.) Then, in early 2010, I read (at Aaron Iba's suggestion) <i>The Mindbody Prescription</i> by John Sarno. Within a couple of days, I saw remarkable improvement; within a month, I was symptom-free. YMMV, of course.<p><pre><code> 2. Don't wear a brace of any kind. </code></pre> I question the advice to wear a back brace. Over time, this leads to muscle atrophy and causes or exacerbates the very problem you're trying to solve.<p>I don't warm up, don't wear braces, and have switched back to a Qwerty layout. I stay strong and healthy other ways, but I now ignore all RSI-related advice that doesn't acknowledge the "mindbody" nature of the problem. I've been symptom-free for more than a year. (This is an anecdote, so take it for what it's worth. The book's like $12, though, so you don't have much to lose.)

Tips for completing resolutions, such as these 12:<p>a. Have a plan with dates, milestones and accountability mechanisms<p>b. Start small (Instead of one month using a different OS, how about day and go from there)<p>c. Make it meaningful, Know why you're making a Committment, Be Selective (Have an intrinsic motivation to make a change in your everyday life)<p>d. Stay the course (If you get off track, get back on)<p>edit: formatting, typo

"Going analog" is something I have really tried lately. The more I find myself into tech, the more I appreciate not being around it.<p>I really want to give woodworking a shot this year.

I definitely recommend learning about the humanities and other fields outside of technology. For most people, we already know enough about programming, and learning another language or framework is a marginal investment.<p>But delving into another totally different subject like healthcare, or insurance, or psychology opens you up to a whole set of new problems and ideas. Whereas just learning technology helps you with the implementation side of things, not the high-level problem solving.

I was really hoping this would be about screen resolutions. 1920 x 1200 all the way, baby (or failing that 1600 x 1200, which is increasingly expensive to get nowadays).

Though the entire list is pretty awesome but somehow I missed or got overlooked that it does not contain the factor to give time to family.<p>Most of us, programmers when get busy in work tend to ignore our families unintentionally.This pattern is not different than artists who pain pictures.<p>After watching the TED Talk by Matt Cutts(mentioned in my last post) and some serious complaints by my wife and kid, I decided to make a resolution of this year to give more time to family than I used to give last year. It's covering few things mentioned in the post:<p>1- Coming out of comfort zone: When I start coding or doing something relevant of it, I just forget everything and often work in wee hours. Now coming out of it is definitely not comfortable for me but eventually would turn out to make things sane around me.<p>2- Be social: When one gets social,even with wife and other family member, you got to face things which don't pertain coding. While things like that could be painful at times due to bad situation but it naturally makes your brain cells think about other things as well.<p>So, I request to myself and entire HN community to give more time to your family too. You never know how such "non-technical" moments make your technical journey more beautiful.<p>my 2 cents.

You will never be able to accomplish being "Healthier". What is healthier? a little healthier? maybe a little healthier than that? until you feel healthy? eat green stuff?<p>Try something more concrete like "Eat no more than 2 fast food meals a month".<p>Basically, your first resolution should be "Set 11 tangible goals".

Great list. This is basically my new years resolution, which is actually a list of things I've wanted to do for a long time that I put together after I lost funding. The most important one being complete a personal project. My list has a few additional items including learn web dev and launch a simple web app and get back into mobile development and release something on Google Marketplace and\or the Appstore.

Other than going to work on time using a Seinfeld calendar ( so that my lax work environment doesn't eat into my evenings ) I'm going with this: <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/newyears-resolution-full-disk-encryption-every-computer-you-own" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/newyears-resolution-fu...</a>

Good mathematicians make good programmers ... if they want to. but those I work with (Finance) can produce very awefull code.

Get serious with Testing? :-)

I really like the suggestions. So, January is analog. Time to buy myself an XBox Kinect and try and high score Virtual Dance Off High School 8.<p>3. Embrace the uncomfortable. How about quit Facebook...

Well I have tried to put my money where my mouth is in ref to this, just ordered the following from amazon.<p>SICP (Wizard book),<p>Practical Electronics for inventors,<p>Code Complete,<p>Javascript: The good parts,<p>Programming Android,<p>Arduino Cookbook<p>Now the question is , what order to read them in?

languages: I'm going to give F# under mono another try, in the spirit of other langauges suggested (haskell, ocaml, racket)

Another one:<p>Meditate Regularly

13. browse stackoverflow daily

Love the list. Favorited that for future-use with spicing up my life.

A toc but no links, maybe you need to add: learn usability

+1 for trying the vegan diet<p>If you do this, please go to restaurants and request a vegan meal. The environmental benefits of the vegan diet are well-documented.<p>The best way to enact change is to get restaurants to start listing vegan options.

Amazing list. I'm gonna follow every month.

me: talk more.

Programmers stuck inside who need fitness ideas get out and meet people. Go to meetup.com, type in your area and type in running, health and fitness. Find a running club where you meet up somewhere and run around a loop, trail, or city area. I found that extremely rewarding. It is a filter to screen out the fraggles from the doozers.