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Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

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Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#71

Post by christiansakai »

mrwnmonm wrote: post #65
christiansakai wrote: post #9

I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I've been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by…

wtf, are you me from another direction? I am exactly the same and was about to read chapter 2 in Engineering a Compiler right now.

Lol. I hope it will guide both of us in our journey!

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#72

Post by christiansakai »

z3t4 wrote: post #55
christiansakai wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are good questions and part of my soul searching as well. I think I want to get into top tech companies (financially motivated), but I've been studying DS&A a lot and definitely think it was a diminishing returns. I think my DS&A is pretty good but I'm still experiencing failure for FAANG interviews. I don't want to do more DS&A if I have to, but I want to get better so that I can move beyond just doing APIs an…

What will a higher compensation lead to ? eg. you land a job at FAANG, get a good salary, but what is the next step after that? eg. Step 1: get better at DS&A, step 2: Land a job at FAANG, step 3: ??? Is there anyway you can get to step 3 without going through step 1 and 2 ?

To be honest. I don’t know what will be the step 3.

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#73

Post by christiansakai »

mihaaly wrote: post #60
christiansakai wrote: post #9

I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I've been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by…

>it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. It is not supposed to happen that way. Only in dreams or under the right stellar constellation matching optimal circumstances. In other words: when being lucky. Mastering knowledge is a long process. Knowing a technique is one thing, applying properly in practice on a daily basis in combination with other aspects is the next, knowing when not to us…

It's like playing music. You improve as a musician by playing with others. That's when you listen to others' tempo and dynamic and combine it your own. But you can't just improve by playing with others. You need to drill your own repertoire by yourself, alone, for countless of hours.

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#74

Post by andrewflnr »

jcims wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercising caution is good advice, but you can overdo it too. The kind of stuff I got up to with my chemistry set 42 years ago would probably scare the pants of you but I learned a lot and the worst that ever happened was that I lost some glassware. Safety glasses, good ventilation, gloves when you need them and patience are the most important ingredients here, as well as a good textbook or course. You can have hours…

The tree F's of safety in home chemistry: fans, fire extinguishers and feet.

Is that feet as in "wear closed toed shoes" or as in running away if necessary?

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#75

Post by jacquesm »

andrewflnr wrote: post #74
jcims wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tree F's of safety in home chemistry: fans, fire extinguishers and feet.

Is that feet as in "wear closed toed shoes" or as in running away if necessary?

Fans to ventilate, fire extinguisher for when things go wrong, feet for when the fire extinguisher isn't enough.

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#76

Post by christiansakai »

jiux wrote: post #68
christiansakai wrote: post #9

I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I've been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by…

A paintbrush is simply a tool that enables a painter to bring a dream to reality. A piano is simply a tool that enables a pianist to bring a dream to reality. A programming language is simply a tool that enables a programmer to bring a dream to reality. Ask yourself this: “Am I a dreamer and a doer...or have I just been doing?”

For sure, all of these times, I've just been doing.

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#77

Post by ehsanullahjan »

munificent wrote: post #51
christiansakai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the response. I'll get your book as well. I got that book because it had good reviews on Stackoverflow survey that said prefer that to the Dragon Book.

For what it's worth, I'd probably recommend the latest edition of the Dragon Book before "Engineering a Compiler" too. The Dragon Book does a good job of establishing a lot of the foundation for a compiler. It is so dominant in the field that most other compiler textbooks either deliberately or inadvertently assume a reader is familiar with it. The Dragon Book has a repututation for being unapproachable and it is pre…

It would be interesting to hear your opinion of the book [Modern Compiler Design](https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Design-Dick-Grune/dp/...).

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#79

Post by hos234 »

playing_colours wrote: post #26
christiansakai wrote: post #9

I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I've been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by…

> it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. This is true, particularly, if you work full-time, and your job is not connected to the subject of your passion. You will have few hours in the evening, but for a hard subject you may not have enough energy. You can try remote work, it worked for me. Currently, my client allows 2-3 days a week of working from home, and also now I’m looking for my…

The barriers are all in the mind.

The simplest way to upgrade skills is to work with teams working on problems of interest to you, where you have to meet up with them, atleast once a week if not more. The social aspect is what drives learning.

Doesn't matter if you are working full time. Find a subject that interests you THEN find/contact research labs/profs/startups working on it. Tell them you have X hours a week (for 3 or 6 months) you want to devote to it and ask them for an assignment. If you have more experience and skill than the avg grad student they employ, it's easy to find a project.

I have done this with incubators, univ labs and research labs close to me. I am luckily in a large city, where once you start looking, you will find all kinds of interesting characters doing interesting things. Follow their blogs, twitter feeds and github repos. Identify where you want to contribute. Make a small bug fix or document some aspect of their code and the door opens.

Re: Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study

#80

Post by blablabla123 »

christiansakai wrote: post #9

I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I've been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by…

Yeah but there are jobs that actually do not involve only CRUD stuff but technically more advanced topics. But this might mean that other things at the place might be less nice, like a remote location, not so nice office, not so good payment, unstable job, unstable working conditions. In my experience at least one of them matches. Also sometimes there might be the opportunity to take jobs at not to tech savvy companies but that might strive to offer you to work on technically interesting things and give you some freedom on that. That said, working at such places might give you inspiration for side projects. Non-inspiring job = not much inspiration for side projects - at least that's my experience.

Also don't forget to believe in your self. Many of the cool projects are - when taking a closer look - more like stub projects. It has a really cool part but it's oftentimes incomplete. So no crazy technical skills are needed, it's more about interested, being ready to explore something new and being pragmatic about solving things...

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