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The more you learn, the faster you can learn

pranay.gp

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Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#51

Post by joshgel »

NHQ wrote: post #5

This describes me pretty well. I'm a dedicated learner, and I think it's what I do best. I don't master topics. Even the information about the thing can be a distraction. It's about synthesizing info into your working knowledge. Everything is reference. CSS is a great example. Do I know everything about it, even after 10 years? Nope. But I know it well enough that a quick reference is all I need for any problem. Prog…

I also agree, but I'm a physician (an internist => generalist). As I grow in my career, I'm finding that when I encounter a new disease or procedure or treatment and go to read about it I learn an order of magnitude faster than when I was in medical school or maybe even residency. I'm amazed by it.

My retention is a bit better too, even if I don't see that new thing again for a long time, but not nearly what I wish it was... At least now I'll remember having seen it and a general sense of the concept even if I have to re look up the specifics.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#52

Post by lacampbell »

samvher wrote: post #37
lacampbell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... once you know a handful of languages, it's fairly easy to adjust to a new one. If I have experience in C++, C#, Ruby and Javascript, do you really think Java is going to blow my mind? Or I won't be able to write decent Python? I'm sure I'd pick up a few tricks and my code would get idiomatic but I am going to be 90% there from day one.

I'm pretty sure Erlang, Prolog and Forth would blow your mind.

Are there a lot of Erlang, Prolog and Forth jobs, where you are?

Face it, we all pretty much use the same 10 or so languages in industry.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#53

Post by usgroup »

meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

Unfortunately you probably are getting dumber, look to folks who had the same trajectory as you but are further ahead for confirmation.

If your work doesn’t get more interesting you’ll adapt to fight the boredom by becoming dumber. You have to fight that somehow if you value your mind.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#54

Post by loup-vaillant »

meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

I've learned one important thing on the job: how not to do things. That's more important than it sounds. I noticed for instance that I developed a taste for simplicity over the years that wasn't there when I started. Now junior programmers can read my code.

Domain specific knowledge (so I can talk to the customer) I generally learn on the job. But it's not generally applicable, to other domains, and thus other jobs.

Technical, generally applicable knowledge? Mostly on my own time. Companies don't want to pay you to learn. They want you to apply your knowledge. I suspect this explains in part why they can't retain employees: they learn nothing, they get bored, so they leave. Changing gig at least lets you learn a couple new things the first few months.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#55

Post by formalsystem »

meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

> I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things every week. I'm thinking of taking a year off just to learn new things.

Even at the senior level I don't think you'll get what you're looking for. Unless you're leading new research efforts, it won't make much sense to move you away from a system that you only understand.

A friend convinced me to quit my job a year ago and I'd highly recommend it. If you can afford it, quitting your job to learn new things can be a really valuable investment. There are so many new fields and textbooks out that could each easily turn into an interesting OSS project and some income. You can write a book about all the new stuff you're learning which which will help raise your profile. It takes a couple of days to really to the gist of any CS/Math field if you have access to the right resources and the right amount of free time.

So taking time off doesn't have to be a career hit, you need time to explore new fields (all the interesting ones are initially hard to grok) but you'll have a unique skillset by the time you're on the other side and will probably make more money if you decide to get a job again. This has only really been true post-internet.

If you wanna chat, email me, it's in my profile.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#56

Post by pranaygp »

meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

OP here

I'm sorry you feel that way :(

> idiosyncrasies of their code

I've only had about 6 months of processional work experience, 3 months of which have been open source code, so even just learning _their_ code had a huge learning impact on me because I saw it as "wow, this is how code works in production". I think I learnt less about code itself though honestly, and instead learnt the systems and how those people thought about things. A lot of my code reviews on other people's PRs were "Could you explain to me why you did things this way" since I was just learning.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm less than a year out of uni and am still learning new things every week. Taking a year off doesn't sound like a terrible idea - though I know I personally couldn't motivate myself and would end up just playing DotA the whole day ️

I'd love to keep chatting if you'd like and talk about it and how we could learn stuff. Wanna DM me?

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#58

Post by samvher »

lacampbell wrote: post #52
samvher wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Erlang, Prolog and Forth would blow your mind.

Are there a lot of Erlang, Prolog and Forth jobs, where you are? Face it, we all pretty much use the same 10 or so languages in industry.

I'm working mostly in Erlang and from what I can tell there is quite some demand for Erlang and Elixir developers. Also there seems to be a lot of demand for Scala developers which while based on Java is not the same as those 10 languages. I've also used PostScript in a work context (which is stack based like Forth).

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#59

Post by galfarragem »

usgroup wrote: post #53
meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

Unfortunately you probably are getting dumber, look to folks who had the same trajectory as you but are further ahead for confirmation. If your work doesn’t get more interesting you’ll adapt to fight the boredom by becoming dumber. You have to fight that somehow if you value your mind.

> If your work doesn’t get more interesting you’ll adapt to fight the boredom by becoming dumber.

This matches my experience also. And is transversal to all fields.

Re: The more you learn, the faster you can learn

#60

Post by lsc »

formalsystem wrote: post #55
meuk wrote: post #50

I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so. I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things ev…

> I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things every week. I'm thinking of taking a year off just to learn new things. Even at the senior level I don't think you'll get what you're looking for. Unless you're leading new research efforts, it won't make much sense to move you away from a system that you only understand. A friend convinced me to quit my job a year ago and I'd highly recommend it. If you can af…

>So taking time off doesn't have to be a career hit

My own experience has been pretty different. I took time off of my work to run a business. we even wrote a book [1] - Now, uh, I needed to run that business, on an emotional level, I mean. but it was a hugely bad idea financially.

When you show up to an interview after spending years running your own company? I mean, I'm sure it's different if you are management, but as an IC? Even though I had written a book[1] it was like I was unemployed for that time. There's no way my wages are anywhere near they would have been had I spent more of that time working for other people.

I mean, my own case would have come out differently if I was able to sell my company to someone big, which may have come down to a few obvious unforced errors of mine?

I mean, sure, sometimes it's still worth it to take time off of work to do something else... but don't say it's not a career hit. It is a huge career hit and you need to include that in the equation.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Book-Xen-Practical-System-Administrat...

(When doing the "is it worth it" math on writing books, consider the shelf-life; that shelf life doesn't just apply to sales, it also applies to the reputation boost. My own recommendation to my younger self would have been to get a job while the buzz for the book was at it's height.)

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