Taking stock

The year is drawing to a close. That's usually a time to think about what we've done and what's in store for us next year. Let me start by looking back for a moment. It's almost exactly ten years since I started this blog. The frequency of the posts went up and down, as did their subject matter and, unfortunately, their quality. I started writing it because I needed to put my views and ideas into words, often just to get them straight in my own head. At least that's how it looks in retrospect. I went through different phases as a writer, from worrying that I hadn't posted another article in a long time to not thinking about the blog at all. For a long time I wanted to keep an eye on readership, which I mistakenly thought was the only measure of my success or failure. Critical comments and criticism in general ate away at me, as did trying to stay consistent between what I wrote and what I tried to do myself. What I want to say is that writing a blog isn't just fun. If you put your own views and ideas in public, you have to expect that aside from people who agree or disagree, there will be people who pick over your words, take sentences out of context and generally make fun of you. Anyone who puts themselves out there in public has to expect to be an easy target above all else. This year I set myself goals of writing so many articles. Looking back, that was silly, because what I'd like for next year is to dismantle the limitations and barriers I built in my head. My goal for the coming year is to be freer in what I say and write.

This year I enjoyed working on CZ Podcast. Filemon and I got to interview a whole range of interesting guests, and I always felt I'd come away from recording with something valuable. Sometimes I think we're like Šimek and Bubílková in their day. I labor to pitch the balls and Filemon knocks them away with remarkable composure and ease. That's probably why it works so well. We always tell ourselves that we have to enjoy recording above all. My wish for next year is that we keep enjoying it for as long as possible.

The book that inspired me most this year was The Black Swan, about the impact of highly improbable events. I won't go into it because I've talked about it on the podcast and this column isn't really the place. I mention it for another reason. It reinforced my conviction that if we're looking for inspiration, we should look outside technology. That reminds me of a story from the last Czech Java User Group meeting. After a session of seven-minute talks on different subjects, a friend told me how surprised he was by the number of talks on soft skills. It seems to me that we try to see our entire field through a strictly technical lens and forget that 80% of the time it's no different from any other field. At its center are people, with all their mistakes and misjudgments. How is a well- or poorly managed military or construction project different from one in IT? How does a good or bad structural design for a building differ from one for software? Why do people make certain decisions in certain situations? Inspiration is all around us. Sometimes all it takes is getting our brains into a different gear and stepping outside the confines of technology. I'm going to start next year with Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

The Czech Java User Group has been with us for six years, and I feel like I'm shortchanging it a little. Or, to put it another way, it has much more potential. I've always wanted a wide range of topics, different schools of thought and subjects people can choose among, with no obligation to tie everything to Java. I wish we were a little braver about speaking on things we haven't entirely mastered. I see it in myself. I've been working up the courage for some time to give a presentation on what I learned from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. I'd be glad to make that happen.

Having learned my lesson from The Black Swan, I won't make the mistake of predicting the future of technology and development based on the past. As its author Nassim Nicholas Taleb put it, “The future will not be as we see it through today's eyes.” I have to laugh at all the technology predictions I've made here. They were fun to make and a mistake to follow. So please take with a grain of salt any article that tries to tell you the future in the form of “Ten XYZs you'll need, or your career will end in rubble and ashes.” Above all, I wish you, dear readers, and myself an open mind in the year ahead.