2014 Blog Update, status and learnings, Cory Rylan.

So its time for my year review of 2014 and what I am planning for 2015. So I'll cover the good parts and not so good parts.

The Good Parts

First of all I graduated with my bachelors in Computer Information Systems (Computer Science) with my Industrial Graphic Design minor. This year was my first full time year as a web developer. I had some great opportunities to learn and grow. Some of the awesome things I have been able to learn and work on this year include:

• Deep dive into JavaScript
• JavaScript testing and TDD
• Working with NodeJS for tooling and build processes
• AngularJS
• Sass CSS preprocessing
• CSS Architecture including BEM/SMACSS
• Browser/Mobile Performance
• Style guides and Pattern libraries

I added 12 blog posts. Not much but its a start. I had the chance to go to three conferences. I have started some fun side projects such as losemycookies.com.

The not so good parts

2014 was a pretty good year so this year is list is short. I had my first project canceled so that was a challenging learning experience. My skills in SQL and backend work have suffered from me deep diving into front end web development. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing but I would like to work on those weaknesses.

I only wrote 12 blog posts. I will be attempting to double that this year if not at least write one post a week.

Stats for my blog

My blog this year had 1,473 visitors and almost 10,000 page views. A huge improvement over 2013. My blog was visited from over 90 different countries. My top locations were:

1. United States
2. Brazil
3. United Kingdom
4. India

As I improve on writing more I hope this continues to grow over 2015.

New for 2015

2015 I am setting quite a few goals to work on.

• Write a blog post once a week
• Get into speaking starting with lunch and learns or meet ups
• Start using ES6 JavaScript
• Continue working with AngularJS
• Improve my backend skills
• Work more with NodeJS
• Get familiar with new web standards such as Web Components, FlexBox and Service Worker

I can't wait to get started and will continue writing and posting my progress. Happy new year!