And just like that another year has come to a close. To me it’s felt like I’ve been really quite quiet compared to past years but a quick count shows that I published 17 posts on here, which is just as many as I did in 2014.
Microsoft released a new browser, codenamed Project Spartan and later renamed Microsoft Edge. This was pretty huge (I think) for web developers and I speculated on what it would mean. Having now been using Edge as my primary browser since it first came into the Windows 10 previews I must say I am a happy web user. For my day-to-day activities Edge just works, the way any browser should, I don’t recall the last time I had a rendering issue, or platform issue (other than 1Password Teams which they have a bunch of broken accounts that have invalid keys, of which I have one). My biggest gripe is the lack of plugins, I don’t have access to my password manager which plain sucks. I’m sure something is in the works (c’mon, it’s gotta be!) but until then it’s going to be a hassle that I can live with.
As a web developer there are 2 things that annoy me, that I can’t side-dock (easily) and lack of plugins (which makes working with frameworks much easier). I really want side docking because I have more horizontal space than vertical so I want to leverage that with my tools off to the side. Now sure, you can use snap to achieve this, but it’s not an integrated resize so it’s a 2nd class citizen. I also talked about one of my favourite features in F12 and how to simulate tracepoints in Chrome’s dev tools. It you’re not using tracepoints (or a simulated attempt) I recommend getting in on the action.
In among the excitement of a new browser coming out there was the expected trolls who seem to think that there should be a single browser and that it should be Chrome. So I took to my keyboard to do a writeup about the dangers of a browser monoculture.
But it wasn’t all browsers, I dived back into F# this year, speaking at the F# Sydney user group on writing a type provider (which I would like to explore further with Umbraco for strongly typed without the mess of writing classes, but that’s a problem for another day). I then joined in the F# Advent Calendar and wrote about how to know what time it is using F# and ntp.
I also continued my work with Pluralsight, this year I turned my attention to getting their Umbraco content up and running, first publishing Umbraco Jumpstart which aims to give an overview to people new to Umbraco, then followed it up with Using ASP.NET MVC with Umbraco to look at the development experience. In 2016 I’ll be looking to add more courses to the library on Umbraco and am always open to suggestions on what you’d like to see (I have some ideas but I’d prefer to be driven by the community).
The one thing that was really difference this year, which is why I think it’s felt like a quiet year for me, is I did much less speaking than in previous years, in fact this was the first year my wife and I didn’t go overseas to a conference. I missed my first DDD Melbourne ever (and the other DDD’s) but that was because they scheduled it on the same day as my wife was due with our first child, which I figured I should hang around in Sydney for. My hope is to make it back this year and we’re also looking to start-up DDD Sydney again, we’ve spoken to a venue that we like but there’s a bunch of background work before we can lock it in. Keep your eyes open for announcements.
And finally I hit my 5 years at Readify and also received a promotion to Lead Consultant. This has given me the opportunity to spend more time focusing on the business side of consulting, undertaking workshops, and working with my fellow consultants in their careers. Shameless plug, we’re looking for people to join us, so if you’ve wanted to get into consulting drop us a line or email me directly (my email isn’t hard to find ;)), we’ll even help you relocated to Australia if you’re not already here.
Well, that’s a wrap.