I feel like it's usually easy enough to dive deep when you are absolutely certain you need to use this right now. If there is any uncertainty about how and when to use it, I think that's where the fall off occurs in the deep dive.
I think we can forget how useful a shallow dive can be. I took a deliberate, but shallow, dive into Erlang and it was lovely. I may never write a line of Erlang, but I feel like I got a lot of quick gains on a lot of interesting concepts in software just by diving in a bit.
Shallow dive, this is the approach I took most of the time for new technology. Just spent 1 or 2 hours at most, try to get to a point where you can relate it to existing concept you already know. Then I considered it as done.
Sounds like you got a lot of exposure to Erlang, and got a fresh perspective from diving in...which is fantastic! Reminds me of when I bought a book on Ruby on Rails at a time when all I had done professionally was ColdFusion. I didn't realized how limited I was until I saw such a different way of doing things.
However, I do think it's important to cover your bases if you are interested in deeply learning a subject. I spent years writing JavaScript before I really grokked closures. I'm not sorry about that path, but I could have spared myself some mysteries if I had followed a more "Progressive Advancement" type path.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Great write-up! A lot of devs tend to try and dive into the deep end too quickly imho! (myself included, of course)
I feel like it's usually easy enough to dive deep when you are absolutely certain you need to use this right now. If there is any uncertainty about how and when to use it, I think that's where the fall off occurs in the deep dive.
I think we can forget how useful a shallow dive can be. I took a deliberate, but shallow, dive into Erlang and it was lovely. I may never write a line of Erlang, but I feel like I got a lot of quick gains on a lot of interesting concepts in software just by diving in a bit.
Shallow dive, this is the approach I took most of the time for new technology. Just spent 1 or 2 hours at most, try to get to a point where you can relate it to existing concept you already know. Then I considered it as done.
Yes, perfect rhythm.
Sounds like you got a lot of exposure to Erlang, and got a fresh perspective from diving in...which is fantastic! Reminds me of when I bought a book on Ruby on Rails at a time when all I had done professionally was ColdFusion. I didn't realized how limited I was until I saw such a different way of doing things.
However, I do think it's important to cover your bases if you are interested in deeply learning a subject. I spent years writing JavaScript before I really grokked closures. I'm not sorry about that path, but I could have spared myself some mysteries if I had followed a more "Progressive Advancement" type path.