Great article! I definitely understand the fear of obsolescence and think its entirely valid. Some people definitely experience ageism in the industry. For many folks out there, I personally believe its more of a fear than a reality, though. I'm closing in on 40 and back in the day I built applications on the LAMP stack, ASP.Net 2.0, and old-school J2EE. More recently, I've worked with React, RxJs, Spring Boot, Docker, AWS, and all kinds of buzzwordy modern software ingredients. Tomorrow, I expect to work with entirely different technologies. If you build good habits, then you won't have to worry about your skills rotting.
I really feel that the key is to build good habits. Do code katas often. Practice Project Euler problems. Learn new languages. Build side projects on different pieces of technology to see what they're like. Put things in different clouds (I've tried out Heroku, Azure, and AWS). Target different devices (web, mobile, desktop). These are the muscles that you can exercise to stay fresh. Good luck!
Definitely! Thanks for expanding the solution. I grow up in a school system that you can be absolutely A+ on all subjects (and those subjects does not change). I almost took it for granted that, what I learned before is all that I needed.
With this mindset into my 1st job as a software engineer, I came to realize what’s missing among the co-workers (mechanical and electrical engineers, since things stay relatively stable for them). I had to run away from that environment and dive into somewhere people practice the ‘habits’ you mentioned.
I didn’t waste too much time (about a year or so, fresh out of collage), but I wish someone would have commented early on. Thanks!
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Great article! I definitely understand the fear of obsolescence and think its entirely valid. Some people definitely experience ageism in the industry. For many folks out there, I personally believe its more of a fear than a reality, though. I'm closing in on 40 and back in the day I built applications on the LAMP stack, ASP.Net 2.0, and old-school J2EE. More recently, I've worked with React, RxJs, Spring Boot, Docker, AWS, and all kinds of buzzwordy modern software ingredients. Tomorrow, I expect to work with entirely different technologies. If you build good habits, then you won't have to worry about your skills rotting.
I really feel that the key is to build good habits. Do code katas often. Practice Project Euler problems. Learn new languages. Build side projects on different pieces of technology to see what they're like. Put things in different clouds (I've tried out Heroku, Azure, and AWS). Target different devices (web, mobile, desktop). These are the muscles that you can exercise to stay fresh. Good luck!
Definitely! Thanks for expanding the solution. I grow up in a school system that you can be absolutely A+ on all subjects (and those subjects does not change). I almost took it for granted that, what I learned before is all that I needed.
With this mindset into my 1st job as a software engineer, I came to realize what’s missing among the co-workers (mechanical and electrical engineers, since things stay relatively stable for them). I had to run away from that environment and dive into somewhere people practice the ‘habits’ you mentioned.
I didn’t waste too much time (about a year or so, fresh out of collage), but I wish someone would have commented early on. Thanks!