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Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#91

Post by _____s »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #64
_____s wrote: post #40

I don't think there's been any better value for me than Gary Bernhardt's Destroy All Software. I randomly stumbled upon it way back in 2014 when I had just learned my first programming language and was dabbling in Ruby, watched everything, and it made me much better at my job. It was $29/m at the time. Apart from that, I think maybe one or two books every year. Most of them are pretty poor, but the value of that odd…

Gary's free conference talk videos have been some of the most mind-expanding materials I've met. Go watch them now. (his paid episodes are irrelevant to me because they tend to be about things I have a lot of experience with, otherwise I'd buy without question)

Are they on the Destroy All Software membership or somewhere else?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#92

Post by miguendes »

guiambros wrote: post #49
x87678r wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$49/mo isn't cheap though, you can buy an awful lot of books for that money directly.

$99/year via an ACM subscription [1]. And you get the printed copies of ACM magazines shipped to you every month. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22799753

Is it still worth to get it from ACM? I remember that they have recently restricted a bunch of sfuff on the ACM subscription. Examples: live online trainings, katacoda, notebooks, sandboxes and certifications.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#93

Post by kamaal »

jkingsbery wrote: post #48

As many others have said, books are the best things I've spent money on, but let me say more: Do books sometimes say things that are obvious? Yes. For example, when I first read Martin Fowler's book Refactoring, I had been renaming variables and moving methods from one class to another for years. But he gave a new framework for thinking about something that obvious. I've found the idea of separating out my coding flo…

>>Do books sometimes say things that are obvious?

There's a difference between things being obvious when a concept is exposed, and being proactively aware of a concept and having it as a practice/hobby.

Unfortunately the difference between these two things is huge.

Books are the cheapest and yet a high quality way of learning things, getting clarity and in general being exposed to rich quality of concepts. You could sure spend wandering in the wilderness learning things by experience over years. Or you can get them learning a book.

Books aren't even that expensive, given how much they give you on the longer run.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#94

Post by d3nj4l »

_wldu wrote: post #47

Spend $9,000 US dollars to get a MS in CS, Data Science or Cyber Security from Georgia Tech. It's a solid top 10 CS program. It will take a few years, but it is definitely a great investment. If you don't already have an undergrad degree and/or want a quicker program, look at some of the reputable code/security academies that partner with major state universities. They cost a bit more 15K to 20K but are shorter (typi…

You make it seem like getting into the MSCS program at Georgia Tech is just a matter of money!

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#95

Post by totally »

esond wrote: post #77
ThePhysicist wrote: post #58

I once did a two-day workshop on negotiation techniques, which covered not only methods but also helped me to become more comfortable dealing with the psychological stress that's induced in many negotiation situations. So far I'd say the course (which was free as I won it as a prize in a business plan competition) is directly responsible for at least 50-100.000 € of additional revenue that I made in the last years, s…

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. This relatively short book has made more of a difference to my personal livelihood than maybe any other pice of literature or advice. You really don’t realize how much negotiating you do in day to day life. Its good to be comfortable with it.

The audiobook is good as well, you can hear the tone of voice, which is useful.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#97

Post by _wldu »

d3nj4l wrote: post #94
_wldu wrote: post #47

Spend $9,000 US dollars to get a MS in CS, Data Science or Cyber Security from Georgia Tech. It's a solid top 10 CS program. It will take a few years, but it is definitely a great investment. If you don't already have an undergrad degree and/or want a quicker program, look at some of the reputable code/security academies that partner with major state universities. They cost a bit more 15K to 20K but are shorter (typi…

You make it seem like getting into the MSCS program at Georgia Tech is just a matter of money!

I didn't mean to imply that. Sorry. If you can get accepted and if you can complete the work, then it's a good program for you. But, yes, it is very difficult (as it should be).

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#98

Post by sukh »

Books, Udemy and independent authored content helped me get better at finance and programming.

Fuji cameras are great for daily use and its hardware controls teach you how to take nicer stills.

Manufacturing a real product helped me learn about distribution and inventory– something I'd never be exposed to in tech.

Travel helps me reboot and think about whats really important.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#99

Post by marinhero »

nolok wrote: post #26

I found that (for me !) it was less useful to invest in learning to do new things, as opposed to investing in being more efficient and / or having my work time more pleasant. Make your work feel like pleasure and there is no limit to what you can achieve. So maybe don't only think "what can I be better at ?" but also "how can my life be better while I work ?". Software: A proper training session with a high level deb…

+1 on the IDE front. I used to do everything on vim and will always find silly errors that an IDE would have found immediately. I switched to rubymine and not only me but everyone on my team appreciates it!
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