These are the tech/programming things I want to work on in 2022. If you know of any good resources to help me accomplish them, please share them in a comment.
Reduce dependency on external services
We’ve seen several outages of web-based services over the last few weeks. Over the years, there have also been countless issues with privacy and security of hosted data.
I want to eliminate services I don’t really need and have backup plans for everything else. If you don’t have control over your data, is it truly “your” data?
Increase privacy and reduce being tracked online
To paraphrase the poet Allen Ginsberg, “I saw the best IT minds of my generation waste their abilities writing software to track users and present them with more, and more-compelling, advertisements.”
My specific plans around privacy are to:
- Switch my browser to Brave (already done)
- Site-specific blocking of addictive content – for example, hide “Recommended Videos” on YouTube (already done for some things, but there is more work to do here)
- Install a Raspberry Pi-hole network ad blocker
- Investigate more privacy tools and techniques, and share them with others
Create more checklists and automation
There are several recurring tasks I need to perform. I plan to eliminate the ones that aren’t needed, automate the ones I can, and create checklists for the others.
The first things I want to work on are:
- Posting WordPress posts and YouTube videos
- Templated solution for C#/WPF projects
- Setting up a GitHub repository/project/build
Learn Linux
Now that .NET is cross-platform, and it looks like there are viable cross-platform desktop UI libraries, I want to do some of my work in Linux.
I upgraded an older laptop and installed Parrot Linux on it. Now I need to find some good guides.
Consolidate website hosting
I have several websites, hosted with two different web hosting companies. Moving all of them to one web host will save money and make them easier to manage.
Find work projects that are more fulfilling and less frustrating
I’ve spent most of my career doing custom programming for large corporations. While they pay well, they often come with inefficient, frustrating bureaucracies. From now on, I want to work with companies where the accomplishment to frustration ratio is extremely over-weighted towards accomplishment.
Create and share more of my programming work
I recently started live-stream programming on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/codingwithscott
I also have some ideas behind creating videos about “how to be a programmer” – not about coding, but the habits and philosophies behind programming.
The amount I can do here will depend on my paid work and how well I can eliminate/automate/delegate the work needed for these ideas. It also depends on not burning out – which has been especially difficult during the events of the last two years.
Leave a Comment