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My strengthsFinder assessment lists Life Long Learner as one of my top 5 strengths. And that is so true. I love learning new things to the point that if I'm not

by epalmer 10y ago

My strengthsFinder assessment lists Life Long Learner as one of my top 5 strengths. And that is so true. I love learning new things to the point that if I'm not careful it can be dysfunctional. It is not so much about learning something deep as it is about learning that something is possible and whether it is easy or hard. Being that my job is to develop and manager a small team of developers I can easily satisfy my quest to learn. I just have to be careful to not then burden my team with new technology for the sake of technology since whatever tools and tech we use has to be supported by a very small team long after I am gone. On the plus side if I do this well then I uncover technology or tools once in awhile that help the team achieve our goals faster, better, cheaper.

RobertKerans 10y ago
Yup, I think is very common, I'm in a similar position and feel the same way. Partly it feels like a game; filling in holes in knowledge is like locating pieces that fill gaps in a jigsaw. And partly it feels like a scrabble up a hill - the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know, so you try to grab more and more knowledge. And it does lead very often to bad programming, I appreciate the GP point - reinventing wheels, NIH syndrome, overuse of clever techniques etc., but that's not necessarily the case; a big chunk of the knowledge you grasp is [or should be] best practices, testing, clean code etc v0v
- epalmer 10y ago
  All good points. I'm not a NIH person so that has never been a problem. But I can be distracted by personal projects and work projects that are optional. I have been focusing my learn at work activity on: - learning the languages I use better - learn the tools better (IDE, etc.) - and improving our software development processes We have a long way to go on software development processes (best practices) because we are 100% self taught team that covers a diverse but not uncommon set of technologies (linux, apache httpd, javascript, jquery, angular, sass, java, bash, php, etc.) and we are always slammed with priorities for senior management of the university. I do love filling in the gaps with learning. Sometimes I find something I learned a long time ago causes something else to fall in place and I think to myself "that is why I needed to learn that". Maybe a bit of serendipity.

by epalmer 10y ago

RobertKerans 10y ago

Yup, I think is very common, I'm in a similar position and feel the same way. Partly it feels like a game; filling in holes in knowledge is like locating pieces that fill gaps in a jigsaw. And partly it feels like a scrabble up a hill - the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know, so you try to grab more and more knowledge. And it does lead very often to bad programming, I appreciate the GP point - reinventing wheels, NIH syndrome, overuse of clever techniques etc., but that's not necessarily the case; a big chunk of the knowledge you grasp is [or should be] best practices, testing, clean code etc v0v

epalmer 10y ago
All good points. I'm not a NIH person so that has never been a problem. But I can be distracted by personal projects and work projects that are optional. I have been focusing my learn at work activity on: - learning the languages I use better - learn the tools better (IDE, etc.) - and improving our software development processes We have a long way to go on software development processes (best practices) because we are 100% self taught team that covers a diverse but not uncommon set of technologies (linux, apache httpd, javascript, jquery, angular, sass, java, bash, php, etc.) and we are always slammed with priorities for senior management of the university. I do love filling in the gaps with learning. Sometimes I find something I learned a long time ago causes something else to fall in place and I think to myself "that is why I needed to learn that". Maybe a bit of serendipity.