3 ms·

I don't keep up on things I don't use, knowing that if I need to use it I can get to the GetThingsDone mode in a short time frame. I know I won't be an expert a

I don't keep up on things I don't use, knowing that if I need to use it I can get to the GetThingsDone mode in a short time frame. I know I won't be an expert and nuanced things will not be apparent early on. Changing languages, frameworks, libraries or infrastructure types of things doesn't happen very often though. Even newer cloud infrastructure things rely on HTTP verb based API's and lots of JSON with configs in YAML files. So if I was to learn a new cloud based thing, I would watch videos on how the overall process works, then install the necessary stack to begin tinkering and start doing stuff. Maybe read up on some ways people are using the thing to help understand how it fits into my set of problems it could solve. Experienced engineers learn by doing.

gregjor 3y ago
No one can keep up with everything, and no one needs to. You focus on the tools that get the job done for you and master those tools. I have got a lot of mileage out of understanding Unix/Linux (dating to the late '70s) and relational databases (introduced in the early '80s). Almost all modern languages derive from C and use C libraries. All of the web sits on top of a few protocols like HTTP. Despite appearances and hype the actual pace of meaningful innovation in the software world seems glacial compared to computer hardware. Learning the foundational skills pays off, because new and novel things will almost always have those fundamentals at their core. We don't perceive the new car models introduced every year as radical or fundamentally different from the cars we drove last year -- if you can drive a car you can easily learn to drive almost any other car in a few minutes. That holds for programming/software tech skills too, though it does take more than a few minutes to learn a new language.

3 ms·

I don't keep up on things I don't use, knowing that if I need to use it I can get to the GetThingsDone mode in a short time frame. I know I won't be an expert a

by mattbrewsbytes 3y ago

gregjor 3y ago
No one can keep up with everything, and no one needs to. You focus on the tools that get the job done for you and master those tools. I have got a lot of mileage out of understanding Unix/Linux (dating to the late '70s) and relational databases (introduced in the early '80s). Almost all modern languages derive from C and use C libraries. All of the web sits on top of a few protocols like HTTP. Despite appearances and hype the actual pace of meaningful innovation in the software world seems glacial compared to computer hardware. Learning the foundational skills pays off, because new and novel things will almost always have those fundamentals at their core. We don't perceive the new car models introduced every year as radical or fundamentally different from the cars we drove last year -- if you can drive a car you can easily learn to drive almost any other car in a few minutes. That holds for programming/software tech skills too, though it does take more than a few minutes to learn a new language.