Self-directed learning

The XY Problem

The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem. This leads to enormous amounts of wasted time and energy, both on the part of people asking for help, and on the part of those providing help.

Learning skills you can practice

How to teach yourself hard things

Rules of programming experiments

Rules of programming experiments

Square Signals : Blinded by “how”

You need to figure out the whys behind the hows you’ve been using, so that you can make some new hows. For a while, since you’re drawing the map (and figuring out that you need a map, then what a map is), you’ll need much more time to get anywhere.

Just-In-Case vs. Just-In-Time Learning

Should software engineers learn new things “just in case” we need them in the future? Or should we learn the things we need “just in time”, when we realize we actually need them?

In defense of blub studies

In short, if you’re in search of generalizable knowledge that compounds exponentially over time, then blub studies looks like the crap you have to wade through to get to the good stuff. So it’s easy to see why people give up on understanding all the blub they’re surrounded by, except what they need to get the job done.

But for me, the opposite attitude has been more productive. Computers can be understood—even if it’s hard and takes a while. Blub studies is more generalizable than it seems, and has its own way of compounding over time, too. That makes it a lot more useful than you’d expect.

Roadmaps to becoming a modern developer

Community driven roadmaps, articles, guides, quizzes, tips and resources for developers to learn from, identify their career paths, know what they don’t know, find out the knowledge gaps, learn and improve.

Roadmap to becoming a Java developer in 2021

Roadmap to becoming a Java developer in 2021.