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I started to feel like i am falling behind with all these interesting libs, servers, frameworks, protocols, languages, platforms recently. Especially, if you a

by obilgic 14y ago

I started to feel like i am falling behind with all these interesting libs, servers, frameworks, protocols, languages, platforms recently. Especially, if you are a student and trying to keep up with all these new stuff. It is becoming really hard to decide what to learn next or what to focus on.

buzzkills 14y ago
Learn the fundamentals not the frameworks. The frameworks will come and go but the fundamentals change much more slowly. For example in this case, if you don't already, learn how long polling works, and what the alternatives are, learning how web sockets work, learn how comet works etc. It will lead on to how TCP/IP works at a basic level anyway.
MichaelGG 14y ago
Don't get blinded by this stuff. It's always moving; it's fun coming up with new ways to do the same thing. Plus, everyone thinks they can do a better job (myself included!). Kinda like how kids think they'll be the best parent or teacher ever when they grow up. Focus on understanding various modes of thinking, the various key paradigms of programming. Work on understanding basic algorithms, so that given a problem, you can do some rough math and have a general idea of the bounds involved. Spend some effort understanding the low-level stuff. Long polling's probably been used for over a decade. You should be able to figure out why long polling exists. Think about, for instance, implementing an IRC chat room in the browser, without using any special new features, just HTML and old JS. Once you understand that, you should be able to skim this article, and understand the point and value of the tool without having getting into the details. For me, the point of reading such articles is to see if someone came up with a new way of viewing something, an idea or perspective that might expand how I deal with another problem in the future. Only secondarily do I think I'll use most of the tools I read about (although it's nice to know such a thing exists, for the day you do need it).
freshhawk 14y ago
Keep an eye on what's out there, surface level among all the things that are useful (or just interesting to you). Dive in when you have an actual problem to solve. Don't decide before you dive in, use that surface knowledge to know what your options are and where to start but don't make decisions with it (can be tricky). And as others are saying, know your fundamentals, and know your theory. Get experience doing something real start to finish as often as possible and in order to do that you will have to dive into things. That's how to decide what to learn next.
- aantix 14y ago
  Upvote. At the startups that I've worked, things move quickly and unless you have a personal motivation to learn something, you can't keep up. It's best to get a cursory view of your available options (star them, bookmark them, commit them to memory) and when the situation arises for a specific problem to solve, you'll know of a handful of options to further investigate.

by obilgic 14y ago

buzzkills 14y ago

Learn the fundamentals not the frameworks. The frameworks will come and go but the fundamentals change much more slowly. For example in this case, if you don't already, learn how long polling works, and what the alternatives are, learning how web sockets work, learn how comet works etc. It will lead on to how TCP/IP works at a basic level anyway.

MichaelGG 14y ago

Don't get blinded by this stuff. It's always moving; it's fun coming up with new ways to do the same thing. Plus, everyone thinks they can do a better job (myself included!). Kinda like how kids think they'll be the best parent or teacher ever when they grow up. Focus on understanding various modes of thinking, the various key paradigms of programming. Work on understanding basic algorithms, so that given a problem, you can do some rough math and have a general idea of the bounds involved. Spend some effort understanding the low-level stuff. Long polling's probably been used for over a decade. You should be able to figure out why long polling exists. Think about, for instance, implementing an IRC chat room in the browser, without using any special new features, just HTML and old JS. Once you understand that, you should be able to skim this article, and understand the point and value of the tool without having getting into the details. For me, the point of reading such articles is to see if someone came up with a new way of viewing something, an idea or perspective that might expand how I deal with another problem in the future. Only secondarily do I think I'll use most of the tools I read about (although it's nice to know such a thing exists, for the day you do need it).

freshhawk 14y ago

Keep an eye on what's out there, surface level among all the things that are useful (or just interesting to you). Dive in when you have an actual problem to solve. Don't decide before you dive in, use that surface knowledge to know what your options are and where to start but don't make decisions with it (can be tricky). And as others are saying, know your fundamentals, and know your theory. Get experience doing something real start to finish as often as possible and in order to do that you will have to dive into things. That's how to decide what to learn next.

aantix 14y ago
Upvote. At the startups that I've worked, things move quickly and unless you have a personal motivation to learn something, you can't keep up. It's best to get a cursory view of your available options (star them, bookmark them, commit them to memory) and when the situation arises for a specific problem to solve, you'll know of a handful of options to further investigate.