I have long had a fascination with learning new things. However, it is generally unstructured and follows whatever the interest of the moment is. I have been and continue to be a proponent of motivation based learning, believing that we learn best when there is an internal vested interest. At least for me, one downside of this approach is a propensity for cursory knowledge on many topics without revisiting them in more depth. This large surface area of topics has resulted in consistently saying, “One day I will get back to exploring topic X in depth”. Anecdotal experience has indicates lower follow through.
A Proposed Solution
In a desire to explore topics in greater depth, I am engaging on a sort of gamified learning experiment. Over the next 30 days I am committing to spend at least 30 minutes each day on focused study on a topic of interest. From my experience completing the 100 Days of Code challenge, I found the consistent application on a focused goal a rewarding pursuit. It provides a sense of direction and loose boundaries around the learning process. With so many exciting things to learn and explore, it can be easy to shift from one to another as I have been known to do.
My vision for this experience is a means to have time-boxed focused study of a given topic. They may not occur every month, and a given topic may warrant more than one round of 30 days. I elected a shorter calendar duration than the 100 days of code challenge given the more specific nature of the topics.
So why functional programming? I’ve been looking for various areas to branch out of my normally realm of focus and further diversify my programming knowledge. I have come to appreciate the functional paradigms of the array methods in JavaScript and want to further my understanding of functional programming concepts. I have a couple of resources that I have been meaning to work through on the topic, and plan to finally make them a priority. In the same vein as 100 Days of Code, I will be sharing progress and lessons learned along the way with the hashtag #30DaysofFP on Twitter.
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