I feel that I have become a much better programmer this year. I have learned a lot more about Visual Studio and now use all of its features. This includes using bookmarks to find my way back to lines of code, using macros to automate some tasks, using the debugging features, using templates to create new items, using snippets for code I frequently reuse, etc.
I have also learned better methods for debugging ASP.NET web applications. I can now use log4net to write debugging information in a text file. This makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot logic errors in the code behind files.
My documentation methods have also improved because I now have additional tools to do syntax highlighting and I have integrated my notes into the Microsoft Document Explorer. This is a fairly sophisticated method of creating documentation that few other developers use.
I have become a better database developer because I have learned the value of cascading deletes, column encryption, and transactions. I am also using more sophisticated types of joins.
I’ve recently begun to learn a lot more about web application security and have a better understanding of cookies, sessions, proxy servers, web bots, captchas, and HTTP methods. However, I still need to learn more about buffer overflows, cross site scripting, and SQL injection.
My next goal is to improve my use of CRUD in ASP.NET web applications. CRUD is an acronym for Create, Read, Update, and Delete which is the functionality you need to manage a database table. I’ve been working on too many projects that I did not build from scratch so I have not developed my own methods of implementing CRUD. This is now a high priority for me.
My other goal is to migrate a few web applications to ASP.NET 2.0 and get some practice using its new features. I want to abandon Visual Studio 2003 and ASP.NET 1.1 which now appear to have many shortcomings.
