Comments on: Latest software development read

By: Skill set ownership « Smurf on Spreadsheets

Skill set ownership « Smurf on Spreadsheets — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:59:00 +0000

[...] Skill set ownership The last post on knowledge or rate of learning links here which is a post by Eric Sink talking about several things, one of which is taking responsibility for your own skill set. I posted about that a while ago in a book review. [...]

By: Dennis Wallentin

Dennis Wallentin — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:58:36 +0000

I’m been thinking a lot of trying to learn Spanish. The driving force is to go there and meet spanish supporters of Barcelona FC and Vuelta (The Tour of Spain) to discuss two of the things I really enjoy, football and bicycling :)

Kind regards,
Dennis

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:58:22 +0000

Marcus
Yes – Its all a matter of priorities
shall I learn a new peripheral language or go and play with the kids?(Or earn a living I suppose)

By: Marcus

Marcus — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:47:57 +0000

Delphi. I’ve downloaded and installed TurboDelphi and have even quickly dipped my toe in the water to see how it feels. Meanwhile, I’ve been so busy with everything else I’ve barely touched it since. While I know it’s beneficial to my professional development, planning to do it and doing it are two separate things. As John Lennon put it, life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

Cheers – Marcus

By: vbryant

vbryant — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:56:14 +0000

In order to expand one’s programming toolset I would recommend learning a language which is entirely different from the one that is currently being used. For example, if you’ve been using a procedural language like C, Fortan or any of the other “old school” languages you should try an OO programming language like smalltalk, C++ or java.

But if you really want to understand what a programming language does take your favorite language and write a runtime environment for your own language with all the programming conveniences you ever wanted. For example, create an XML syntax and write a java program to execute the XML code (okay, I think that’s been done, but its still an interesting exercise). Having gone through this exercise I’ve learned a great deal about the fundamentals of programming languages and how they are implemented.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:49:34 +0000

I did look at ‘s’ once but it seemed a bit beyond me at the time. The other side of it is that a lot of say UK Excel devs will have “business” experience that can not be matched my chaps in Indian? true/not true?

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:54:49 +0000

I’d recommend Ruby (see http://gobansaor.wordpress.com/2007/01/16/why-ruby/), not just to “expand the mind” but it can be a very useful general purpose tool. Also, try out some of the new user-focused development environments such as Proto (http://www.protosw.com), a great mashup/etl tool with deep integration with Excel and VBA.