There's So Much To Learn, Yet So Little Time!

#discuss #learn

Coming from a Wordpress/PHP background, I'd like to get more into JS Apps and other such things. How do you decide what framework to learn, what tools to learn, and how to manage all of the things you could learn with a 9-5, and other life obligations.

Any suggestions from the Dev.to community?

Top comments (6)

Itamar Turner-Trauring • Aug 2 '18

Best place to learn in depth is on the job. You have real problems to solve, you have more motivation, potentially more access to resources, and you're forced to prioritize. I talk about this context of learning new language (Ruby) here: codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/09/le...
Learning based on job gives you one criteria for what to learn in depth. Another criteria is "what will move my career in a direction I care about". (If you're doing this in free time for fun, learn whatever you want, but sounds like this is for career purposes.)
Spend an hour a week learning about a broad set of technologies. Goal isn't to use them or play with them, but rather "I know this exists if I need it". I e.g. star github repos, for example, when they sound useful. Just knowing a tool exists to solve a problem is quite valuable. I talk about some places to do this here: codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/07/gr...

Jack Harner 🚀 • Aug 2 '18

I definitely like having real world problems to solve. I'm fairly proficient now with BigCommerce's Stencil Framework, since that's what I'm working with for my 9-5's store.
Career advancement is definitely my goal. I see a lot of job posts looking for like React/Angular/[insert js web-app framework]. I also see people looking for like Drupal/Laravel devs which might be the route I need to take since I'm more comfortable with PHP (Most of my knowledge is closer to building custom themes off of WordPress, rather than straight PHP)
A lot of my work starts with "I know what I need to do, now I just need to go figure out how to do it". Having a broad knowledge of the tools available is a great thing to have.

rhymes • Aug 5 '18

I definitely agree! I learnt the most at work solving "real world" problems.

ps. @itamarst ! Nice to see someone of "Twisted Matrix fame" on here :-) Are you still in the core team?

Itamar Turner-Trauring • Aug 6 '18

Not doing much Twisted these days, alas.

Juan F Gonzalez • Aug 6 '18

That title describes my thoughts exactly. Back in 2016 I had the realization that if I'm going to have a chance at keeping up with all that there is to learn then I'll need to change what I've been doing in college and truly learn to learn. Also learning about productivity and resources management would help a lot. So yeah bit by bit I've become increasingly good at it but mostly is just a matter of practice.