This has been one of my busiest and most productive years, but you wouldn’t know it from the infrequency of my blog updates.

The majority of my writing time was spent creating two books on Node.js which were released this year - Node: Up and Running and Building Node Applications with MongoDB and Backbone. I’ll use that as my excuse for not updating here - I’m not planning to take on any major projects like this in the near future because I want to get some of my “smaller” ideas accrued over the year out in article form.

Apart from writing, I pulled up roots and moved to the West Coast; it was an epic move since we have a larger than normal family, but the new environment and business opportunities have been well worth it. Now that we live on a mountain next to the ocean, I’m going to feel very reluctant to go anywhere else.

At the end of 2011 I predicted that mobile development would become a necessary tool for serious developers. It’s certainly been my bread and butter this year, and will likely be even more so in 2013. Desktop development will remain important, but I can see future world where the majority of “normal” customers will be consuming content on a tablet or handheld device. There is going to be a greater dichotomy between content creators (think - developers on laptops) versus content consumers - designing for mobile first will position you for that economy by keeping your focus on ease of use.

The top three posts this year were:

  1. Using DateTime in the Play! Framework

  2. Setting up WordPress with nginx and FastCGI

  3. log4php Performance