I cannot fully express how completely wonderful this book is. I bought it on a whim the last time I was in Nashville and am thrilled that I did. This book, unlike many other technical books, does not espouse any language, technology, or platform as the be-all-end-all to the programming community. Instead, they emphasize the fact that programming is more of an art than a methodology. Any coder can glean something immensely beneficial from this book.
One concept that I have found most useful during my reading is that of a "Knowledge Portfolio". The authors state that in order to stay competitive in a very competitive sector, we must constantly treat our repository of knowledge as an investor might his stock portfolio. They reccommend things such as learning a new language every year, and reading technical and non-technical books regularly. Sounds like common sense, right? But having it put in words does something; now it has become a goal. In keeping with this goal, I'm currently evaluating which language I'm going to learn this year. Technically, I suppose I could count C#, but I'd like to get a jump start on this goal by learning at least one other language this year. I'm leaning a little towards Ruby, but I'd also like to pick up my studies on Java as well, since that's a language I started learning several years ago. Plus, having become a recent convert to C#, my learning curve would be slightly less steep with that language.
On another note, I've been whittling away at an RSS reader in my spare time. I've got a basic implementation coded up and running, but it was done quickly and has a rather hackish nature to it. I'm hoping to go back and rethink/rewrite the core libraries as I have free time, but I've got a few other projects that I'd like to get started on as well. I'll never understand why I can never keep just one project...I either have no ideas for projects or a ton of ideas for projects. Guess I'll just have to prioritize them and decide which to keep and which to push off til' later....
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