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Question: Hey Justin, how do you gauge whether something will be worth your time to learn for career/skillset advancement? I find it difficult to separate the fruit from the pith, where 99% seems to be pith- any insights?
Asked by jack (185.65.135.x) on October 21 2022, 3:26pm
Reply on October 21 2022, 6:45pm:
    I mostly learn things as needed to accomplish a particular goal; thus, if there's something I want to do and that's the way to do it, it won't be a waste of time (unless I fail...)

Comments:
  • Posted by Mespotine (46.114.200.x) on October 21 2022, 6:50pm:
    I would add, if it sounds fun(and isn't destructive to you or others) can be reason enough to learn something. Not everything must fit a goal to be worth your time.

  • Posted by Justin on October 21 2022, 8:57pm:
    Having fun is valid goal in itself! That's probably the most common goal for me.

  • Posted by jack (146.70.134.x) on October 21 2022, 9:47pm:
    For sure, I just meant specifically regarding career/skillset. There's a lot of overlap between interesting topics re: programming that I find fun (primarily), but also advance my skillset. But certain things, like webdev stuff, I have almost 0 interest in, but I feel like it would be beneficial to get a baseline. Things like that... Tangentially, any network programming book recommendations? Thanks :)

  • Posted by Mespotine (46.114.205.x) on October 22 2022, 6:24pm:
    It rather depends on what you want to do in your career. Which is probably what makes fun for you. Specialize in this. For instance, if you are interested in obscure programming languages, learn old ones. There's tons of old computing systems still running on COBOL etc. But the programmers who knew it die out. It's a niche that could give you income for a long time. So it depends on your career choice.

  • Posted by Mespotine (46.114.205.x) on October 22 2022, 6:26pm:
    Remember: the sheer existence of Reaper is (IIRC) because Justin wanted to make music and other DAWs weren't fun to use. So he started Reaper which indicated what to learn.

  • Posted by jack (193.32.127.x) on October 22 2022, 10:11pm:
    Thanks Mespotine. One of the issues, for me at least, is going beyond tertiary information about some topic I find interesting after the bulk of the fun is had; you'll get some cursory implementation and surface level understanding before the new shiny thing shows up. I can't help but feel that's a bad trait to have, or maybe I've just naive. I wonder how much of Reaper's development involves a cycle like that?

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