OT: Your accomplishments in 2013 and plans for 2014

[monarch_dodra]

On Wednesday, 11 December 2013 at 19:45:25 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
wrote:
> As for my future plans, I'm hoping to land myself a nice
> programming-related job next year. I've never had a programming 
> job,
> most of the paid work I ever did was physical work, such as 
> drilling
> through bricks, rock, concrete, installing and repairing air
> conditioners, installing central heating systems, lighting and
> electrical work, and stuff like that.

I'm actually baffled to hear that someone of your caliber has is 
not a professional programmer. Passion and theory alone will only 
get you so far... (IMO).

So, I hope you land yourself that job.

> I also want to and plan to study algorithms this year. Whenever 
> some
> algorithm-related discussion popped up in the newsgroups I would
> typically avoid giving any input as most of the conversation 
> would go
> over my head. But I'm gonna bite down and study hard, I really 
> want to
> "grok" it.

Algorithms are a major branch of programming, and, IMO, one of 
the funnest ones to study. Having solid knowledge of all the 
major algorithms (as well as data structures in general, they are 
also "forms" of algorithms) will *always* help you tremendously, 
no matter what you are doing.

I (personally) really enjoy thinking in terms of "complexity" (in 
operations or memory), "worst case complexity" or "amortized 
cost".

Having a background in math helps, but if you don't have it, it 
means ever more stuff to learn! Learning is fun.

> > My first mini-geek is due in June :D

> Awesome! So it's a he?

Who said girls can't be geeks? Seriously though, I don't know yet.