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Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

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Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#11

Post by BWStearns »

I am working on a large (for one person/me) project that requires a bunch of skills that I didn't have when I started, so I kind of made a dependency tree and I've done basically JIT learning as I go through the project. I had to learn how to design thing X, which requires learning tool A, then to fabricate thing X I had to learn skills Y and Z, which required etc. I also knew I had unknown unknowns so the tree expanded as I went. You learn all this new stuff and the todo list has gotten bigger!

For learning in any new-to-you large context without a structured curriculum it'll be a yak shaving adventure. But occasionally checking your to-learn list you'll realize that you _don't_ need some element you thought you did because you've found an alternate/easier path, so be on the lookout for opportunities to prune the dependency tree.

If you're self-teaching a big new subject area you're going to encounter unknown unknowns and your objectives will change while learning/doing, keep your plan evolving based on what you learn to keep moving forward.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#12

Post by adityam582y »

dangerface wrote: post #10

> how do you create learning plans (specific path towards a direction)? Planning is the enemy of doing, spend an hour a day doing something you don't know how to. If you are an intermediate and want to advance you need to learn horizontally, broaden your horizons it will be useful in places you didn't realise don't try to specialise. > Also how do you avoid participating in the sessions which offer beginner-friendly…

thanks. I loved the advice to learn horizontally to broaden the horizon.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#13

Post by whydat_whodat »

A "learning plan" is a roadmap.

So, I start there: Google "learning plan for learning XYZ-thing" or "Roadmap for learning XYZ-thing".

As a Developer, we're in luck: https://roadmap.sh/ covers many IT skill-learning roadmaps. I highly recommend starting there. and clicking through to explore a particular skill roadmap it shows.

Aside from that-- I mostly read a book on the topic, via free book sites like Libgen.is -- For example, recently I wanted to learn Kubernetes in the context of microservices. I lucked out and found a book there which discusses both, plus docker as well. Same with helm charts.

Another option: Take a Udemy.com course-- many are 30-40 hours-- plenty of learning material for picking up an introductory skillset. After I finish a course, I sometimes try to build my own version of a project using what I learned, and refer to the course material as needed.

From there, I chat with people on IRC (Libera Chat server) in various chat rooms such as Linux, Docker, Nodejs, etc. (Google: "IRC chatroom for XYZ-Thing" to find out if the topic has a chatroom ). Another option is Discord-- same story.

In the chatroom, I can ask "Do you suggest a path to learning XYZ-thing".

So, basically you just ask the internet, and search for resources such as books, videos, chatrooms, forums.

To ReIterate:

**** Roadmaps: https://roadmap.sh/ ***

Videos: Udemy.com (or google: "MOOCS for XYZ-TOPIC courses)

Books: Libgen.is (or google: "where to find free books online"

Ask people in IRC or Discord chatrooms

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#14

Post by whydat_whodat »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #5

This might be a contrarian point of view but unless you have professional work to expand upon and deepen your knowledge, you won't progress much past beginner material. This is why you won't find much beyond beginner material online because it gets very subjective what to do in what situation. Practical use cases beyond beginner material will only come up on actual working (or not working, LOL) systems. Pretend someo…

This is a good point. Beyond beginner or low-intermediate level material, in my opinion, a person needs to just begin building projects-- whether at a company, or for free during their own time. And reference books, video series, chatrooms, and forums while they build it. To get good at something in the real world, you have to build it in the real world, often from scratch (or nearly scratch, that includes with frameworks) and encounter errors and go through the process of learning to fix the errors, until new ones arrive, and design the architecture... via advice from books/videos/forums/chats and eventually "voila".

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#15

Post by joshxyz »

whydat_whodat wrote: post #13

A "learning plan" is a roadmap. So, I start there: Google "learning plan for learning XYZ-thing" or "Roadmap for learning XYZ-thing". As a Developer, we're in luck: https://roadmap.sh/ covers many IT skill-learning roadmaps. I highly recommend starting there. and clicking through to explore a particular skill roadmap it shows. Aside from that-- I mostly read a book on the topic, via free book sites like Libgen.is --…

you should mention z-library for books like a real man

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#16

Post by throwaway0asd »

1. Avoid frameworks and tools performing heavy lifting that you could do yourself. Software frameworks are architectures in a box designed to eliminate innovation and performance in exchange for safety and convenience.

2. Set ambitious product goals. For example you want to drastically increase speed of transmission handling in your product. This means exploring various different transmission options, such as streamed sockets versus HTTP. You have to measure the difference and pick a winner.

3. Be continuously aware of your learnings. Very quickly you will find that the things you learn, from evidence and measures, differs drastically from popular approaches. These differences build on each other. After applying a few of these learnings in your product it will become both vastly superior to the alternatives on the market and completely unrecognizable to popular approaches for most developers.

Those three steps will impose a critical education path based upon evidence that will provide direction, originality, and constructive feedback. It’s not important that one option is superior to another. What is important is just how superior the better option is, which is something learned from experience and will dictate future learnings.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#17

Post by whydat_whodat »

joshxyz wrote: post #15
whydat_whodat wrote: post #13

A "learning plan" is a roadmap. So, I start there: Google "learning plan for learning XYZ-thing" or "Roadmap for learning XYZ-thing". As a Developer, we're in luck: https://roadmap.sh/ covers many IT skill-learning roadmaps. I highly recommend starting there. and clicking through to explore a particular skill roadmap it shows. Aside from that-- I mostly read a book on the topic, via free book sites like Libgen.is --…

you should mention z-library for books like a real man

looks like z-library shut down

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#18

Post by adityam582y »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #16

1. Avoid frameworks and tools performing heavy lifting that you could do yourself. Software frameworks are architectures in a box designed to eliminate innovation and performance in exchange for safety and convenience. 2. Set ambitious product goals. For example you want to drastically increase speed of transmission handling in your product. This means exploring various different transmission options, such as streame…

That's a new insights about frameworks. Thanks to share.

Re: Ask HN: How do you create learning plans for skills development

#19

Post by adityam582y »

whydat_whodat wrote: post #13

A "learning plan" is a roadmap. So, I start there: Google "learning plan for learning XYZ-thing" or "Roadmap for learning XYZ-thing". As a Developer, we're in luck: https://roadmap.sh/ covers many IT skill-learning roadmaps. I highly recommend starting there. and clicking through to explore a particular skill roadmap it shows. Aside from that-- I mostly read a book on the topic, via free book sites like Libgen.is --…

Thanks for the super-helpful answer, specially roadmap.sh, and IRC rooms.
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