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This article really resonates with me. Most of my coworkers seem perfectly happy to simply show up, do their work and go home and have no desire to seek to impr

This article really resonates with me. Most of my coworkers seem perfectly happy to simply show up, do their work and go home and have no desire to seek to improve their craft. Sometimes I wish I could be like them. I have this thirst for knowledge and to improve my skills, which is why I'm here reading HN. But it is really overwhelming at times trying to keep up with everything here and at times I can't help but feel inferior to others at times. I spent several years using GWT and now I'm getting compensated very nicely to work on an multiple ExtJS products. To keep from getting left behind I've toyed with Angular, React, Mithril, mercury, Redis, etc. and my queue of things to learn keeps getting larger and larger (Docker, Vagrant, Sandstorm, most of AWS stack, ...). At this point I probably have at least 200 bookmarks tagged with a generic "Programming" label. When I'm responsible for the architecture for real systems, I sometimes feel like a fraud. Domain driven design, TDD, CQRS, anemic vs rich domain models, functional vs OO, agile... do I really know what I'm doing? Does anyone know what they're doing? I recently looked back at some code from some senior level architects I worked with when I was still relatively junior - guys I really respected. Some of those projects had truly awful architecture and I must admit I felt a bit better about myself after seeing that code.

jhildings 12y ago
Not much to add, but I feel quite the same. There is a list of neverending things that one is supposed to learn ;P
- marktangotango 12y ago
  The secret is to learn what you need to know when you need to know it. I recently had to use some new js framework hotness; spend a couple days reading blogs, tutorials, and the docs, learn what you need to be productive and move on. Then dump it all, and jack in the next big thing for the next project. Rinse repeat. No one knows it all, no one expects you too. You are expected to learn, get up to speed, semi independently and with little direction. It gets easier after you've done it a few times, then it get really old.

jhildings 12y ago

Not much to add, but I feel quite the same. There is a list of neverending things that one is supposed to learn ;P

marktangotango 12y ago
The secret is to learn what you need to know when you need to know it. I recently had to use some new js framework hotness; spend a couple days reading blogs, tutorials, and the docs, learn what you need to be productive and move on. Then dump it all, and jack in the next big thing for the next project. Rinse repeat. No one knows it all, no one expects you too. You are expected to learn, get up to speed, semi independently and with little direction. It gets easier after you've done it a few times, then it get really old.