As a developer how do you learn new things?

I’ve been asked that question by colleagues, students, and interviewers.

I’d love to be able to give them a simple answer, like “Oh, I pick up a book and read it cover to cover” or “I took a couple of classes” etc.

However, we all know it’s not that simple. Every single one of us learn differently. And we all acquire knowledge at different speeds.

I personally love books, I buy a number of them every year. And I intend to read them one of these days. My wife sees these collecting dust and is constantly asking me if they are still needed. I eventually skim through them and mentally book mark areas of interest. One of these days… (I’m such a procrastinator)

Books are my trigger point though. If I see a title, due to the barrage of emails from publishers, I get the book, skim it, and then start the process of crawling through the internet to learn more. Then I start working on a project using whatever I’m trying to learn.

I’m a very literal learner, and learn by doing. I make so many mistakes… so many! I tear things down and then rebuild often. Cool thing about software, other than time and some electricity, it’s really easy to wipe the slate clean and start over. My method is probably not the most efficient strategy, but I’m ok with not knowing every little detail. Things like, is it more efficient in golang to pass pointers versus by value structures. Eventually, I’ll know things like that and under what scenarios. But, it’s not critical out of the gate. What is critical is the journey and the enjoyment of discovering something new.

Currently, I’ve taken on learning AWS, golang, and event driven architecture.

I’m beginning to think it’s a bigger elephant than I initially thought. But one bite at a time right?

One piece of advice I give to students and less seasoned coworkers, don’t worry about how others seem to learn, focus on yourself. Find what works for you. Don’t be afraid to share, I find trying to explain something to another helps solidify what I think I know (or not know).

I used to be worried about whether or not I knew enough compared to my co-workers. That was an initial driving force that caused me to investigate new things. But that isn’t a healthy or sustainable mindset, and for some it could cause some issues. I was able to change my mind set, and now, I learn for fun. I realized at the end of the day it didn’t really matter our industry changes to quickly so its practically impossible to keep up. Plus, life is complicated enough without me adding to it.

So what’s your method for learning? Are you a research first then go, or a just jump in and hope you can swim kind of person? Or maybe somewhere in between?

Regardless, I hope all of us are able and, encouraged, to learn new things.