This isn't a plan for becoming a better developer. It's an aimless laundry list of all possible things a developer could do (if they had limitless time and no particular goals).
It kinda reminds me of the "shotgun marketing" employed by, well, almost all companies, which comes down to "we don't know what people want but if we do everything then surely something will stick, right? If not, we'll withdraw the product and fire another random shotgun blast."
This list is the shotgun approach to becoming a better developer.
I was just coming here to say the exact same thing.
Write a program in assembly language
Write an application in a functional language
Write an application in an object-oriented language
Write an application in a prototype-based language
Write an application in a logic programming language
Write an application using the Actor model
Write an application in Forth [C]
I totally respect the author's POV, and have no doubt that he is a hilariously better programmer than I am, but none of this would help me do the day to day stuff that all of my clients hire me to do.
I bet it would. Learning Ruby on the side made me a much better PHP programmer in 2005 because Ruby taught me how to do OO programming. Learning a little Clojure has made me a much better Ruby programmer because I started understanding the functional side of things.
Whenever I learn a new programming paradigm, I find it often does help me look at problems differently, and that does help me do the day to day stuff better.
Note I said new paradigm, not just a new language or framework. :)
Fair enough. I wrote that as I'm sitting here trying to puzzle out my very first project that requires me to use Windows (C# for Drupal developers anyone?), which is taking me away from really learning JS beyond jQuery to try and understand Node. I just can't imagine having the time to get through 10% of this list in the next 5 years.
Exactly. It would be quite some job that would pay your salary and knowingly allow you to learn multiple non-business task required languages for 'personal development'.
patio11's comment was a LOT more on target, and much more in the spirit of grinding / levelling-up.
The key, perhaps in both World of Warcraft and in real life, is directed questing, where a reasonably well-defined set of tasks or quests are pursued along a quest-line towards a known goal.
In my case, the quests will be Mac App store releases, but for others it might be marketing materials, start-up exits, or web-site designs.
A more directed approach would be good, but it's not that bad. Breadth of useful knowledge is actually a good thing, if maybe not the best thing. Breadth of topics within a single conversation (which is basically what advertising is) just makes you sound like you have a disorder.
Not really related to the discussion at hand, but your last sentence resonated with me. I hate talking to people when the conversation meanders around to every errant thought they ever had and you never come to a coherent conclusion. I get the impression that they don't truly understand what they are talking about and/or never had an idea that they thought was bad. I love brevity.
It kinda reminds me of the "shotgun marketing" employed by, well, almost all companies, which comes down to "we don't know what people want but if we do everything then surely something will stick, right? If not, we'll withdraw the product and fire another random shotgun blast."
This list is the shotgun approach to becoming a better developer.