Goals

— 3 minute read

Learning random things on the internet that pops in your Reddit, Twitter is always fun and interesting, but learning things to reach your goal is always fascinating and a satisfactory thing. what’s the best way to go about acquiring intellectual capital with which to fund your portfolio? Here are a few suggestions.

Learn at least one new language every new year

Learning a new language always helped me to improve my skills and getting knowledge from a different language. As a self-learner, I started learning to programme with PHP where I understood what are variables, loop, functions and even what a return in function do. It was enough knowledge to make a small application or to make the computer do things that I want. I use to do OOP in PHP but when I started learning JAVA I was enforced to do more OOP things, statically typing also about GUI used in desktop apps. I learned about dynamic language after doing JavaScript where I have to do less static things and more dynamic things.

Read a technical book each quarter

Watching video tutorials help us to learn new things or improve our knowledge in some technology, but in many videos, the author tries to skip some low-level things in order to make the video short and not to bore viewers. So, learning a technical book is very helpful to understand some low-level things which usually is not kept in the video. Completing a book need patience, less distraction, and less disturbance. Once you’re in the habit, read a book a month. After you’ve mastered the technologies you’re currently using, branch out and study some that don’t relate to your project

Read nontechnical books, too

Yea, because you are not going to communicate only with the computer.

Take Classess

Keep taking classes which seems interesting happening in your town.

Participate in local user groups

Try to communicate and have contact with local user groups. It always helps to increase network which can help to get jobs or any other opportunity.

Experiment with different environments

Keep switching and learning new environments. If comfortable with Linux then try windows and if you know both then try mac (if you can afford). If you are frontend developer then this will help to understand and fix cross-browser issues.

Stay current

Keep scrolling Twitter and Reddit and try to avoid Facebook, Tinder (i don't have). Twitter and Reddit are best places to know new things or learn anything from the community.

Get wired

Want to know the ins and outs of a new language or other technology? Newsgroups are a great way to find out what experiences other people are having with it, the particular jargon they use, and so on. Surf the Web for papers, commercial sites, and any other sources of information you can find.

Inspired from "The Pragmatic Programmer"