[addendum: for those of you coming here from Daily Grind #1181, there's also a followup that checked up on the posts from the original people who've responded to the call thus far.]

Be prepared - this blog post is the beginning of a movement that might *change the world*.  By the time you get to the end, you'll see why.

There are two ways to help yourself accomplish a goal:
a) write it down (as we've discussed earlier)
b) share it with someone else

Today I am doing *BOTH*.  In fact, I'm sharing this goal with everyone who stumbles across this post. 
It's one thing to set a goal for yourself, but making it public takes you into a new level of accountability.  Now I am no longer accountable to just myself - now I am accountable to everyone else who regularly reads this blog. 

Among many of his other tips for becoming a better developer, JP Boodhoo advises reading one new development book a month.  I am going one better and making it public: I am telling you all now that I am going to to read (and *comprehend*) a new development book every week for the next 6 months. 

Yes, that's right, by October 21st, 2007 I will have read a total of 27 development books.


Some of you are reading this and thinking I'm crazy, and that this is impossible.  Even more of you no doubt think it's even crazier for me to publically commit to it.  That's fine - but I'm going to prove you wrong.  What sort of a goal is "Well, maybe I'll read a new development book every week for 6 months if I get some spare time?"  BULL.  That's a wishy washy goal that involves no commitment and no real pushing - no real stretching outside of the comfort zone.  "Hopefully I can get this done?"  *Forget it*.  I am *definitely* accomplishing this and that is not wishful thinking - that is a fact.

You can see my reading list below, along with the date I plan to have finished each book.  I still need your help, however; the astute among you will notice that the bottom four entries are the ever-fascinating "???".  This is where *you* have a chance to help guide my destiny.   I need four other books to read and I need the community's advice as to what it should be.  And before you mention it, I know that "Code Complete" is missing from this list; so is Rapid Development, as I have read/re-read both books about 25 million times.

April 23rd: Beyond Code [my review]
April 30th: Head-First Design Patterns (re-read) [my review]
May 7th: Applying UML and Patterns [my review]
May 14th: Working Effectively With Legacy Code [my review]
May 21st: Refactoring [my review]
May 28th: The Pragmatic Programmer [my review]
June 04th: Domain-Driven Design
June 11th: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
June 18th: Enterprise Integration Patterns
June 25th: Applying Domain Driven Design and Patterns, with examples in C#
July 2nd: Refactoring to Patterns
July 9th: CLR Via C#
July 16th: Mastering Regular Expressions
July 23rd: Mac OSX: The Missing Manual
July 30th: .NET Framework Annotated Reference Vol 1
August 6th: .NET Framework Annotated Reference Vol 2
August 13th: Algorithms in Java
August 20th: The Algorithm Design Manual
August 27th: The Little Schemer
September 3rd: Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed
September 10th: My job went to India: 52 ways to Save Your Job
September 17th: Javascript, the Definitive Guide (5th Edition)
September 23rd: CSS, the Definitive Guide (3rd Edition)
September 30th: ???
October 7th: ???
October 14th: ???
October 21st: ???

So, ladies and gentlemen?  What else do you want me to tackle on my literary odyssey? 

For that matter, what are *you* doing over the next 6 months to improve yourself as a developer? 

With that, let's talk about the world-changing part.   You've seen those "tag" posts where we share 200 facts about us that aren't well known or variants of that.  This time the tagging *starts* with me, but I am going to make this a slightly more productive exercise.  I want everyone who I tag with this post to:

a) write a post about what *they* will have done 6 months now in becoming a better software developer
b) tag 4 other people and get them to do the same.

To start this off, I'm tagging Donald Belcham and the three guys who tagged me previously: D'Arcy Lussier, James Kovacs, and George Clingerman!  Special bonus tag to Jason Row since I know he loves getting tagged on these things.

If you think this is all crazy and aggressive, I've got news for you; I'm just getting started.  Wait until you see the goal I am posting *next week*.  Trust me - you've been warned.