A Boring Summary of 2012

As 2012 is already in the end, it is really a tremendous fortune for us because 2012 is not the end of the world.

Looking back on my 2012, just as the old saying goes, “Life is short and time is swift.”, 2012 is short and time is flash!

Now, you can read any part of me if you are interested in. (Pls don’t use sarcasm as comments)

Reading

The number of books I read this year is more than it in the last two years(20 or more), which makes me feel shame for what I was doing during that time.

However, it is still not enough, as I saw many people in Turing community showing their reading list of 2012. It is also an inspire for you to have a look about this topic.

Here comes up an inspiring sentence,”Power is that the ones who are 10 times better than you works are still working harder than you.”

Tragically, through the reading period, I did not have learnt a lot from books.

• Novels like “1988, I want to talk with the world” and “The Cathcer in the Rye” can only make me more disappointed about the social environment, which can reflect many phenomenons in China and also in other countries.

What is more odd for me is that I have already lost confidence of living in such a hypocritical society: not only the party and the government officials, but also the average in the super markets and streets: the goods they threw away, the rude way they speak and the crowd crowding into buses, I began considering about the root of these uncivil behaviors. It is really OT, oh my goddess! Let me stop thinking about it.

• Books pertaining to Traveling and something related to it do waste money and time. I ever bought several ones and spent time envying that kind of life. Believe me, that is really wasting time and you can get nothing but envy.

• Some books do take effect, such as “Dark Time” written by Wei.P.Liu. Reading books tagged psychology can make a true influence, just as what the author said in the book, “Everybody should have a look at books about psychology”. As a result, I kept a to-do list for nearly a term and even try to plan my time in detail incredibly.

• My attitude changed: I started having interest in Reading. As a result, I bought a tablet called Nexus 7 which is produced by my favorite company–Google. It is cute and only 7-inch.

Development

I am always curious about new Technologies, which is really a disadvantage in my own eyes.

Languages

I was in the corner of the programming world and knew less about different languages, though I knew lots of names like ada, brain fuck and so on. It’s not suitable for me to discuss about the advantages and disadvantages about any language, because I am an expert of nothing.

This year, 2012, I have been touch with many different languages. However, this experience is really a chaos and make me stay being an expert of nothing.

Early in the past two years, I even regarded ‘dynamic’ the same as ‘weakly typed’, that is really ridiculous as far as I can see. And what make me more confused is that even some student who major in CS or SE do not know what is compiled language and what is interpreted language.

After the training this summer, I began to show large interest in front-end development rather than what rAy’s favorite –JavaEE. I don’t hate Java, nor do I like it. HTML is so simple and it is not known as a programming language, I agree with this point. But CSS is complicated than I expected, later I knew LESS, Stylus and other kinds of technologies which make CSS more like a language. Bootstrap and Metro UI CSS are what I used most until now, what really amazed me is O’reilly even published a book about using Bootstrap.

I read a JavaScript book in Head First series which is good for green-hand like me. However, with little chances to use it, I am still not able to develop a complex application which JavaScript is the major language. Libraries like jQuery, YUI, KISSY and Arale are what I want to learn to use in the coming new year. Later I knew Node.js, this makes me know more about JavaScript(if you never heard about it, Google and it may shock you), and I’ve ever tried to use it but not deeply.

Not long ago, I used an afternoon to read a book about Ruby in the library –Learning Ruby. That is a period I have began to learn Python. They are really similar with each other, while Ruby seems more flexible. I prefer Python, because it is more rigorous and it can do more than Ruby(maybe RoR is very popular nowadays in web development). I started to learn Python several months ago after I read a book called A Byte Of Python which is quite simple and brief. Later I started to use Django to develop web application, that is really easy for developers to quick start and deploy. During that time, the skill of building web pages improved. In daily life, I may use Python as a scripting language like shell scripting. They are both efficient, but Python seems more friendly to me. Learning Python is more likely a reference book on my bookshelf like Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook.

Some weeks ago, I began to read a book named Seven languages in seven weeks. I posted blogs to show my answers to the questions in that book, however my classmates seemed unhappy to see these blogs. I think I will not stop and finish it later. Blog is the highest level of self-expression, if anyone don’t want to scan them, move your gaze down to others. I just want to record my journey and keep learning new things.

Editors/IDE

The debate between VIM and Emacs never stop just like the debate between Windows and Linux. So it is useless to convince others to use the same editor with you. I chose Emacs.

The first reason is Emacs is written by Richard Stallman, OK, this reason may be ridiculous; Second reason is I don’t like the way VIM works –press ESC to change working condition , that is inefficient for me. Also, Emacs is written in lisp and that is the language standing on the top of programming, adoring made the choice; Another reason, lots of classmates chose VIM as their editor, I just want to be different and try a new way.

Sublime Text 2 is a outstanding editor. It is fast enough and more user-friendly, also, it supports lots of plugins for most languages. But I am not in favor of such a modern one, maybe I am out of time.

People call Emacs a editor, but those who are its super fan call it an OS rather than an IDE or even an editor. I’m trying to make it more likely an IDE to make me do things more efficient, to do this, I printed the GNU Emacs Reference Card and put it near my hand in order to learn to use it quicker. Maybe years later, it will be my mini OS in my Linux.

This year, Netbeans became my most used IDE as I have to write JSP files for our teams’ projects. Netbeans is an excellent IDE for Java programming and front-end development. However, many other IDEs can do such kinds of works, too. Its interface is cleaner and simpler.

Communities

Mailing List

Mailing list is a little like forum. But they look totally different some times.

I subscribed some mailing list and received E-Mails from them everyday. I was excited to post my question in NJLUG first time. After several weeks, I created our team’s mailing list. But it seemed that only predator.rAy was interested in communicating with E-Mails. That is a pity.

Now, I will check my GMail everyday(nearly all the time if I am online) and have a look at what people in groups are doing all day. CPyUG is such a big one that many topics are posted everyday, and I can see hot discusses everyday. NJLUG, HZLUG and SHLUG are all mailing list about Linux, but they are not as lively as CPyUG.

Mailing list is such a traditional but modern way, how I wish my mates can work together and use it with me.

Q&A sites

We Chinese always copy ideas from foreigners’. Zhihu is the Chinese version of Quora, Segment Fault is the Chinese version of Stack Overflow.

In this year, I have tried to be a member of all this sites for a while or a long time. In Zhihu, if some famous people answer questions, they can always get voted even the answers are boring enough. Well, as what I experienced in Zhihu these weeks, I asked 4 questions which were all meanful but only 3 or less ones answered me. It is such a bad feeling that no one answered you in a Q&A community. Then I turned to the original version of these kinds of sites –Quora. More comfortable, more honest and more equality. Stack Overflow is a new-born site in China ant the number of users in not large, but the ones on it are hot-hearted like the people in the QQ group –SF developers.

Git/Github

I joined Github in the early April this year. I even didn’t know what Git is and the similar tools like SVN or CVS though they are a little bit old-fashioned.

This summer, we use SVN to synchronize our codes on Google Code. SVN is quite simple and efficient. But Git has a strong point –commit changes to local server, that means we can commit our code any time even we are offline. Surly there exist lots of other advantages. Selfishly, Git is invented by Linus(I’m his big fan). And now, I am familiar with using Git and widen my knowledge about it.

I am still new to Github though it is 8 months after I registered. I am building my Git-page on it, putting my practice on it, doing projects with my mates on it and visiting famous projects on it. What else can I do? Maybe later I can contribute to some open source projects, that may be really cool!

Addition

• GFW

Several days ago, I saw an issue which is opened in a project called mongol on Github. Here is the address of that project.

The reason why I support ‘conanca’ is very simple, GFW do block many sites and that is really inconvenient for us to use other ‘cross-GFW’ ways except modifying the hosts file. Buying a VPN account seems a good way, but that will surly cost money and we don’t have any income in the college. If we can save a website like Github from being blocked by GFW, why not?

Here I remember another topic of breaking GFW, some software like Free Gate are really evil! Though I am not a follower of CCP, but most of expressions are too disharmony. What do I mean? You can download a Free Gate and have a try.

Last two years, I am eager to break the GFW and excited about visiting Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Yet not this year. Oppressing for years, we have little friends and nothing can we share there. The purpose of getting out is watching videos on Youtube, visiting blogs on Blogspot and download some files from blocked sites. It is really a luck for everyone that Google is not totally blocked in China except the time of NPC.

• Social Networks

I tried to write an article about the future of SNS, but failed. As I considered, I didn’t get rich understanding about the principles and the current situation. So I gave up.

I used to visit Renren often, but then turned into Weibo this year. They are really different social networks.

I preferred to Renren because I can see what my classmates(both high school and university, or even primary school) are doing recently. Are they happy these days or in sadness? What happen in their daily life? And what they are discussing about? That is quite an huge attraction of this kind of web sites. But after a long time, may be a year or two, it is becoming more and more obvious that the someone are over self-expressed while the others are not. Those who are too addicted to Renren always post some boring words or images, as you know, self-snapshots or something like that. Everything should be limited, you are taking photos all day and uploading them to Renren, I can not tolerate and have to block you.

But Weibo is different. Although I have less people known on it, I can follow many coders at work tagged Taobao, Python, JS or maybe Linux. What they push to the Internet is more valuable. And I can know many things earlier than ever before, I can know what is happening in the society but not limited to several campuses, I can get rid of those who like self-snapshot though I can block them in Renren. Weibo is a more efficient way to transport knowledge and technologies and it is also a higher level for self-expression.

• this.About

With my poor English, welcome to point out my grammar bugs and I will fix them as soon as possible. The reason why I wrote this article in English is that may make less people interested in this passage. If you are patient enough to read the whole sentences, you must find it is such a mess.