We live in interesting times. Development is distributed all over the world, and it turns out that many people are capable of doing your job. To remain competitive in the labor market, you need to continuously learn. Otherwise, you will turn into a dinosaur stuck in your job until one fine day it turns out that you are no longer needed, or that your job has been given to someone who is willing to do it for less.
How to solve this problem? Some employers are generous and organize training to develop already hired programmers. Others simply cannot afford to allocate time or resources for this. The most reliable solution is to take care of your own education.
Here is a list of ways to continue learning. Many of the items listed can be obtained for free online:
Read books, magazines, blogs, Twitter feeds, and websites. If you want to delve deeper into a subject, you can subscribe to a newsletter or a news group.
If you really want to learn a new technology, practice is necessary: write some code.
Try to work with a mentor, because if you are the most advanced specialist in the company, it may hinder your education. Of course, you can learn something from anyone, but you will learn much more from a more knowledgeable or more experienced colleague. If you can’t find a mentor, consider moving to another job.
Use virtual mentors. Look for authors or developers online who truly interest you and read everything they write. Subscribe to their blogs.
Study the software environment and libraries you use. By understanding how a particular tool works, you will be able to apply it more effectively. If these are open-source tools, you are in luck. Walk through the code in the debugger to see how it is structured. You will be able to see the code that was written and refined by truly skilled people.
After making a mistake, dealing with a defect, or encountering a problem, try to fully understand what happened. It is quite possible that someone has already encountered such a problem and described it online. Google is at your service.
A good way to learn a subject is to teach it to others or talk about it. If you have to speak in front of others and answer their questions, it will give you a strong motivation to learn the subject. Try organizing a small seminar for colleagues during lunch or speaking in front of a specialized user group or at a local conference.
Join a study group for a particular technology (like a community for discussing design pattern applications – patterns community) or organize such a group yourself. It could be a study group for a language, technology, or subject that interests you.
Participate in conferences. If you can’t attend a conference in person, you can find free video recordings of presentations online, which are published by the organizers of many conferences.
Long commute to work? Listen to podcasts.
Do you use static code analysis tools? Do you read the warnings issued by your IDE? Understand the messages from these programs and the reasons for their appearance.
Follow the advice of the book “The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master” and learn a new language every year. Or at least a new technology or tool. Such horizontal expansion of knowledge will provide new ideas for the technology stack you are currently using.
New knowledge does not necessarily have to be limited to technology. Delve deeper into your subject area; this will allow you to better understand technical requirements and help solve business tasks. Another useful option is to learn ways to increase personal productivity.
Apply to university again.
It would be wonderful if we could, like Neo in “The Matrix,” simply download the necessary information into our brains. But that’s impossible, and therefore acquiring knowledge takes time. It’s not necessary to dedicate every free minute to learning. Allocating a little time for it, say once a week, is already better than nothing. There is life (at least there should be) outside of work.
Technologies are changing rapidly. Don’t fall behind.