As I do pretty much, every year. 2013 was spent learning new technologies. Here’s a short list.
- Go: I taught myself a little bit of Golang and made a few small prototypes in it. I love the language so far, and while it is a bit restrictive, it’s for my own good, as the code is easier to handle.
- PostgreSQL: While a pain in the ass to setup, pgsql is an awesome database and with HSTORE and JSON data types, it can also be used as a key/value storage. I am mostly using it to replace MySQL in some pet projects.
- KnockoutJS: A declarative JS library that makes it possible to create rich applications without dealing too much with markup. I have been using it for a small project that deals with nesting templates in a tree.
- Redis: A fast, distributed key/value database that I was using for a small prototype dashboard project. Especially the queue features are nice, although I wouldn’t use this as a persistent storage.
- D3js: Create SVG diagrams from data. I was also experimenting with D3 for my dashboard project and while I can’t say that I am 100% comfortable with it, it is extremely powerful.
- Java: Most people learn Java early, but not me. I spent 3 months at a new job programming Java and I must say that I like the language, although I hate the toolkit.
- Docker: Absolutely a game-changer in 2013. Docker allows you to create containers for your applications that you can use for development, testing and eventually production without encumbering you with virtual machines. I’ve been using it for development and hope to do more soon.
I am probably forgetting something, but these are the highlights of 2013. I look forward to playing with even more new stuff in 2014.