PeterI think a problem I have with the idea that you can teach yourself stuff in IT through personal, private study is that yeah, you can, but if you don't use it, you forget it. can I learn window functions in SQL? sure! and I can spend a couple weeks doing exercises and maybe even a project. but then when I move on to learning PySpark and BigQuery and asychio and whatever else, within a couple months I don't remember how to do window functions.
you don't learn something-- I mean **really** learn something-- until you are using it every day, over and over again, in some kind of professional capacity. like, who the fuck learned Kubernetes on their own?? no one. you did it in school maybe, but then you **really** learned it by working on real, existing systems with the oversight of people more knowledgeable than you.
so when I think about what to learn next, it's kind of like, why? I've had the experience over and over again of learning PostgreSQL or Docker or pandas, and I made real progress, but if someone asked me to do something with it today I'd have to start all over again because it's been so long since I was hands on.
MattChippytea@peter I suppose there’s something about having a distant familiarity with something so that if you encounter it you’re not starting from first principles. I have to remind myself of stuff I’ve done lots over the past 10 years, but maybe not so much over the last 8 months, when it comes up in a project.
Tony Aldridge@peter I tend to find relearning something I once knew much quicker than from scratch. I picked up some small Tcl tasks after having learnt the basics some decade ago, and after an evening of thrashing about it all started flooding back
Jonathan Joelson@peter All the Haskell, Lisp, an C that I wrote in college is not directly related to my career, but learning those languages still helped develop my understanding of many software concepts.
Yes, you will not be able to sit down 3 years from now and immediately bang out a query with window functions, but your brain has still learned the *concept* and you will recognize parallels when encountering similar things in the future.
@peter The more things you learn the more you will see parallels between problems you encounter in your career and things you have seen before, and making those connections will help you problem solve.
@jjoelson yes, the problem comes when you are starting a career and are required to learn 20-30 different things and demonstrate your expertise in technical interviews without the benefit of real experience. it's fun to learn these things in theory, but learning them on your own to the point of practical application seems like an impossible task.
@peter I’m sorry that you’re encountering this. imo it’s a terrible sickness in the job market that someone starting their career applying for a junior role would need to “demonstrate expertise”.