In the same vein: I'm very used to "printf debugging". When I use a language where it's harder to do that, I feel like I improve as a programmer because I spend

In the same vein: I'm very used to "printf debugging". When I use a language where it's harder to do that, I feel like I improve as a programmer because I spend more time reasoning and thinking about my code instead of directly trying to fix the problem I have right now. As a more general thing: you can learn a lot by removing tools that you usually use from your toolbox. For example, going from a managed language to manual memory management. Going from an IDE to shell commands. Removing tools like language servers. Each time I did one of those things, I learned a lot. However, there are lots of things to learn and I don't know if this was the "most effective use of my time". Another example of hard to balance learning: I'm currently working for a company. Should I focus my learning on their business and our codebase, or on general technology? General technology is a transferrable skill, and I'm scared of being "trapped" in a company if I focus on their specific parts too much. But on the other hand, companies want to recruit efficient people, and I think focusing on the business and our codebase would make me more efficient. I'm a junior engineer, so maybe that's due to a lack of experience. If anyone has insights to share about that, I'd love to hear them.