I'm afraid I disagree. If you stick to what you're good at you'll end up like me. I am The Man when it comes to what I'm good at: my name is recognised by people I've never met, I have my choice of employers and projects, I earn good money and have the respect of my peers, but recently, after nearly 20 years of becoming one of the best there is, I've started to yearn for something more. I've got stuck in a rut, and it's really hard to get out, because by sticking to what I'm good at I don't really have good skills so I can be immediately as productive using other tools. It's not nice going from being a grizzled veteran to a newbie.
I recently did some playing around with Go for the first time, and found it so frustrating because the code doesn't just flow from my fingers, I had to look up the simplest things repeatedly, I don't immediately know what libraries contain most of the code my project needs, and so on.
I would go so far as to say that under no circumstances should you stick to what you're good at. You should always at least play with the new shiny, just have the discipline to not get distracted by it.
Earlier this year I had grand plans of writing a useful piece of code in a different language each month - to play with lots of shinies. But it being useful code each time would, I hoped, help avoid the problem of constant distraction. Unfortunately other things got in the way (good things, so that's OK) and that fell by the wayside, but while it lasted it did make me focus on specific new shinies instead of flitting around.
just have the discipline to not get distracted by it.
You already answered best. Nothing to disagree.
Go doesn't make sense to you, but it does to me. The point is everyone is different and shouldn't go chasing after things based on what the public says or thinks (or, for that matter, what TIOBE thinks).
Here's an example:
Bad
SO: Rust is the most loved language.
Me: Shoot I have to learn Rust.
Good
People: Ocaml is useless for practical projects reserved only for academia.
Me: But I get Ocaml and I feel that its construct really clicks with the way I think
so I'm gonna try to use it to build something useful anyway.
Another (arguably stronger) point being you want to build or learn something for the small wins, not to win big. Small wins always help with the drive.
What Alex Cross said, "You do what you are." is intentionally different from the well-known "You are what you do." I think your case was the latter. The first is meaning you in your guts know best what you are good at and do it. It doesn't mean stop learning.
Actually Go does make sense to me. I just don't know the idioms and tools well enough yet and so have to keep stopping to look things up, breaking the flow. I'm slowly improving, and will become one with the compiler at some point I'm sure :-)
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I'm afraid I disagree. If you stick to what you're good at you'll end up like me. I am The Man when it comes to what I'm good at: my name is recognised by people I've never met, I have my choice of employers and projects, I earn good money and have the respect of my peers, but recently, after nearly 20 years of becoming one of the best there is, I've started to yearn for something more. I've got stuck in a rut, and it's really hard to get out, because by sticking to what I'm good at I don't really have good skills so I can be immediately as productive using other tools. It's not nice going from being a grizzled veteran to a newbie.
I recently did some playing around with Go for the first time, and found it so frustrating because the code doesn't just flow from my fingers, I had to look up the simplest things repeatedly, I don't immediately know what libraries contain most of the code my project needs, and so on.
I would go so far as to say that under no circumstances should you stick to what you're good at. You should always at least play with the new shiny, just have the discipline to not get distracted by it.
Earlier this year I had grand plans of writing a useful piece of code in a different language each month - to play with lots of shinies. But it being useful code each time would, I hoped, help avoid the problem of constant distraction. Unfortunately other things got in the way (good things, so that's OK) and that fell by the wayside, but while it lasted it did make me focus on specific new shinies instead of flitting around.
You already answered best. Nothing to disagree.
Go doesn't make sense to you, but it does to me. The point is everyone is different and shouldn't go chasing after things based on what the public says or thinks (or, for that matter, what TIOBE thinks).
Here's an example:
Bad
SO: Rust is the most loved language.
Me: Shoot I have to learn Rust.
Good
People: Ocaml is useless for practical projects reserved only for academia.
Me: But I get Ocaml and I feel that its construct really clicks with the way I think
so I'm gonna try to use it to build something useful anyway.
Another (arguably stronger) point being you want to build or learn something for the small wins, not to win big. Small wins always help with the drive.
What Alex Cross said, "You do what you are." is intentionally different from the well-known "You are what you do." I think your case was the latter. The first is meaning you in your guts know best what you are good at and do it. It doesn't mean stop learning.
Thank you for the message. I loved reading it.
Actually Go does make sense to me. I just don't know the idioms and tools well enough yet and so have to keep stopping to look things up, breaking the flow. I'm slowly improving, and will become one with the compiler at some point I'm sure :-)