Where have I been?

I need to thank my friend Tom for getting me back to writing. He's doing a craftsman spike to refresh his learning process. Talking to him got me back on track about documenting my own learning. I haven't been documenting lately because I've been studying. I'm 3 classes away from getting my Master's in Software Engineering at DePaul University.

I started looking into this a couple of years ago while in a rut. I wasn't inspired by my work. The problems were interesting, but I wasn't. Instead of solving problems, I spent a lot of energy trying to muster up the inspiration to get into the problem. Up to that time, all of my programming experience had been on the job, so I thought that some formal study would jump-start me. A year and a half later, that was a good decision. I've learned things about the how software is developed, as well as how software can be developed. Best of all, I again look forward to getting up and going to work; to solving problems; and to learning a little more each day.

To give myself a best chance to succeed, I will need to combine all of what I've learned on the job, everything I've read along the way, and what I've learned in my course work. There are some great SE practices that can help move your project forward, as there are some great practices and trends from the field, along the lines of agile methods. It's to cross-pollinate some of these ideas, to mix and match practices and techniques, to upgrade our toolbox for development. I plan to share some of my ideas on this....soon.