I Made My First New Year Resolution
By: Niko F Juliyanto
Tags: Clojure, First Post, New Year Resolution, Programming, Coursera

335 days left until 2021 and what have you done so far in 2020? Did you make any new year resolution? How it’s going?

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

I was kind of people who think that new year resolution is stupid. Why do you need to change the calendar before deciding to do something better? Why don’t you start tomorrow or now? One day, I can’t remember when exactly, I stop to think like that. I think people need a new year, a new number for motivation. It’s a pivot point for turning the book in the new blank page so you can start to write anything you want. Maybe it’s just a suggestion, maybe I am just tired arguing with myself about my own opinion LOL.

Anyway, after living for almost 26 years, I made my first new year resolution. I have so much stuff I want to accomplish. It’s been a couple of years my goal just stuck in my head without any action to accomplish them. I wonder if I actually made one.

I made several resolutions, but in this writing, I’ll share one of them. It’s about programming. I am a full-time employee working as a Software Engineer in a startup. I’ve been doing the same stuff for the past 3 years. I really like my routine to create something through code and helps people. But, I realize that I have a little problem. I always hungry for something new but if I only relying on solving problems at my workplace to learn new things, at a certain point, I am going to stuck and bored. I have been changing the company two times and now I am in the third company. Currently, I feel I am in a good place to learn so much new stuff. However, I know that I will be stuck in the same problem someday. So I decided to start learning a new programming language that not used for my work.

What do I learn? I use two questions as approaches to decide on what to learn. Then, there should be at least 2 items on my programming language learning bucket list for 2020.

First, what do I really want to master but I can’t accomplish until now? The answer is audio programming. Basically, I want to be able to create my own virtual instrument or virtual guitar effect. By doing some research on Google, I found that I have to master, or at least be familiar with C++ first. I already learn C++ in college (that would be 5 years ago) and I am still able to write basic syntax. But I am facing a problem when I have to write the advance one. I try to find courses and tutorials online. Finally, I found an interesting course about Object-Oriented C++ in Coursera from Illinois University. It provides 7 days of a free trial. I just finished the 4 weeks scheduled course in 7 days since it only covers basic C++ for object-oriented. I found it very useful to start my resolution as an audio programmer.

The second approach to decide what’s going to be my new year resolution is asking, how is the current trend in programming? What is the best? I found a StackOverflow developer survey about 2019 programming trends. There are some categories that show the popularity of programming language in 2019. I think it will most likely repeat in 2020. So, I chose what is best from one, only one category in that survey. I chose the top-paying programming language (LOL me) and it is Clojure. Clojure is a functional programming language. I’ve been learning LISP back in college so it doesn’t really difficult to learn Clojure syntax. Actually, I feel its really fun. I made a simple project called countdown to 2020 on the last day of 2019. But I have not continued to learn Clojure again. Hopefully, in February I can continue to learn more things about Clojure.

So that’s how my first month of 2020 going. Despite many disasters and sad news around the globe just in early 2020, new year resolution brings a positive impact on me. Once again, I don’t know its just a suggestion or what, but I am glad I made some new year resolution. It motivates me and when I really have done something, it just feels really good. Even though it’s just a small thing like this project for resizing pictures, I am happy about it.

So, what about you? Did you make any new year resolution? How it’s going?

I almost forgot one thing. I just published my first medium article. It’s not part of my new year resolution but I am glad I finally able to write and publish something.