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When you mean studying something else, do you mean something academic or hobby-based? I think having deep hobbies are really beneficial, and with mine I like to

• hinkley 10y ago
  Generally I think developers don't see our 60 year history as a liability. We've only begun to figure stuff out (the 90's and early 00's were punctuated by arguments over Tony Hoare's work in concurrency, that was all done in the mid 70's by people who don't seem to be aware that they were all written by a single person). I think specifically it helps to deep dive on something that is much older than programming. A craft, an art, a sport, or a physical passtime (dancing, martial arts, kayaking). People have been teaching that stuff for centuries and it turns out they actually know a few things that we only pretend to know. Two things in particular stand out. Cross-training is one. The notion that pushing harder, white-knuckling everything, is a virtue in software development is rarely ever challenged. Not good yet? Just keep doing it. The second is that we don't get that rules exist in a context. Always do this. Never do that. As you mature it is partly your responsibility to figure out when you are no longer part of that context. When you are ready, you will understand why you had to follow the rule and why you are now free of it. Look at the backlash against DRY. A bunch of people who've been using it for 10-15 years figuring out it's not all roses. See also: 'it depends...'