How to prioritize what you learn by creating a topic backlog
Lessons from 25 years of coding
Way back in 1994, I started learning how to code. I look back on those early days of experimentation with great fondness. My journey kicked off after a friend of mine showed me a program he’d written in QBASIC on his IBM 386 PC. I was mesmerised by the idea of being able to control the PC with lines of code.
With the help of a book and the Microsoft QBASIC help files on my 286 PC which I bought second hand for $200, I quickly started writing programs. It was delightfully carefree and my only goal was to create things that were cool or interesting. I had little understanding of the underlying concepts in the code I was writing. I knew the basic data-types, control structures and how to write a function but that was the extent of my knowledge.
Fast forward 25 years and I’m still learning. The tech industry is an ever changing beast and I made a conscious decision a number of years ago that even working in management positions I would endeavour to keep my skills fresh. Most recently, I’ve applied myself to Elixir, Elasticsearch and on improving my understanding of Cryptography.
Every successful engineer has a philosophy of continuous learning, but so often we don’t consider the process of learning itself. To be truly…
