The Sun Sets

So it looks like the Oracle acquisition is finally going to be approved by the EC so the nerd shop that is Sun will be no more. Everyone is kind of waiting to see what will happen with Java and MySQL, but no one really has any idea what will happen. All of this really makes me wish that Java had truly been open sourced because there is no telling what will happen with the JDK.  As for MySQL, I see no way that Oracle doesn’t kill it.  Hopefully Monty’s branch of MySQL, MariaDB, is strong enough to support the current MySQL community if that happens.  I just wish Sun had found a way to stay afloat because that truly would have been the better option in this scenario.

Resolutions

I have done a lot of thinking the past few days and decided I wanted to share a few New Year Resolutions.

1. Make blogging a priority. I have so many ideas that pop into my head, but I never take the time to think them through and write them down. I want to actually start doing that because I feel I have a lot to offer to the community.
2. Be more innovative. This past year I let myself fall into a pattern where I always do the same thing when I am coming up with solutions for projects. I need to challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone.
3. Finally learn Spring and Hibernate. Like many people, I am in a situation where I am maintaining current and legacy apps that use some older technologies. This means I am basically making fixes to Struts/EJB apps that used to be the standard. The world has moved on to Spring and Hibernate and I have been too lazy follow suit. That will change this year.
4. Become more active in local user groups. Last year I started to periodically attend the Java and .NET user group meetings in my area. I enjoyed them, but I didn’t actively participate in the meetings and as soon as I got busy with work I stopped going. I’d like to start attending more and get to the point where I could actually present something at a meeting.

I know these may be simple, but I figure if I start small I might be able to be an overachiever this year. I really want to accomplish these because I know these will help me become a much better software engineer.