Ask HN: How do you keep improving?

I am currently in my ~8 year as a developer, doing my Masters degree while working as a part time developer. That said i find it quite hard to keep improving, i know a lot of people that are better than me but i seem to be unable to really learn from them. What i found out is that i rarely take the time to lern something in depth because i mostly learn stuff to use it and tutorials seem to move at a way to slow pace, so i mostly skip them.

As an axample, i started out with C/C++ development but am unable to keep up with the new standards. I see people write really nice code but whenever i sit down i just keep reusing what i know. The same goes for architecture, i have been building stuff for a long time but other people (with not that much experience) tend to be way better at abstracting stuff or architectual design than i am.

How do you guys keep lerning new stuff? Any techniques or tips?

How to learn how to learn!

Personally, I used to find it tough to learn things I couldn't immediately apply. That's because I would try and commit them to memory in a way I could immediately retrieve them if required. So spawned a path of memory learning techniques... flash cards... ugh...

Then I was watching a Derren Brown show (a British 'mentalist') who taught a guy to memorise hundreds of books so that on command he could read out the content of any given book, any given page and any given number.

The individual would read the books in a particular way (picture dragging your fingers down in a v shape across the page). When asked to reiterate the content, it was very important that he just trusted his gut. And he got it right every time.

The key takeaway for me was that it's equally important to learn how to retrieve knowledge.

Slight tangent here, I also remember reading about how Steve Jobs was able to 'think outside the box' and come up with seemingly new ideas. And the suggestion was he was just good at retrieving knowledge through a confidence of confidence in himself and a non-pressured environment.

Hope that gives you something to think about!

Number two is very important. A good place to find some informal mentorship is in irc chats.

Shout out to Aria from #node.js. What an amazing developer. The best example of a self taught/homeschooled success story. Aria taught me a lot of stuff related to Node and is also active on the channel.

Two thoughts from someone without a mentor (if you can get one, do that) -- you asked how I (or we) keep improving, but my first thought is you seemed to figure out your own problems: 1) "...and tutorials seem to move at a way to slow pace, so i mostly skip them".

Either you're doing the wrong tutorials, or give them more credence.

2) What I do:

i) Keep myself exposed to what is out there (Hacker News, Blogs, Twitter)

ii) Make sure I am always reading a book (audio books, usually)

iii) Be aware of the next wave of tech -- what is bleeding edge? (current answer: Machine Learning, VR/AR, Self-Driving Cars, Blockchain)

iv) Find resources to learn them: Coursera, Udacity, local colleges courses, meetup groups.

Occasionally, a couple of times a year, I will challenge myself to learn some new technology and I will utterly immerse myself in that technology until I have a working basic knowledge of it. It is how I learned Emacs. It is also how I learned Vim when I grew tired of Emacs' shenanigans.