Happy New Year!

Time sleeps for no one least of all the busy IT worker! It’s important to constantly be pushing your professional skills onwards by improving existing skills and learning new ones.

Here are my goals for 2016.

  • Python - I’ve dabbled in Python occasionally over the years but it’s time to take it to the next level. I’ll do this by starting a github project or two. I’ll probably be building tools for MongoDB, MariaDB or elasticsearch. Codecademy have a good python course that’s free. It starts off a little basic for my taste but it’s otherwise pretty good. Python has some interesting language features that you probably haven’t seen before.
  • Puppet - While I’ve worked in environments using Puppet I’ve never got involved myself. This must change! Some of my existing ways of doing things seem a little stone-age compared to the Puppet way of doing things! PuppetLabs have a lot of training materials on their site (some free).
  • elasticsearch - Become a more competent elasticsearch ‘DBA’. I’ve played with elasticsearch a little, it’s good fun and I want to increase my skills in both the IT and development areas. There are a lot of learning resources available from the company behind elasticsearch.
  • PostgreSQL - Become a more competent PostgreSQL DBA. I’ll focus more on the IT side here; backups / restore, configuration and high availability will be the main areas of focus. PostgreSQL seems to be gaining a lot of traction recently so I think it’s a worthy addition to your skillset.