Culture

Always Learning, Always Sharing

It's always been my motto to never stop learning. I also think it is important to share what you've learned with others. I don't think this could be more important then it is as a developer.


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It's always been my motto to never stop learning. I also think it is important to share what you've learned with others. I don't think this could be more important then it is as a developer.

The Problem

I occasionally look back at what I've learned over the years and some of the questions I asked when I started out and think, "how could I be so dumb." Especially when I was a "closed-source" developer, this made me feel uncomfortable to share with others what I did not know.

So when I had people express to me lately that I am "more senior" then some other developers, it made me question what that meant. I know that I may be stronger in some areas or have more project knowledge, but I also know that those developers know way more about things that I know very little to nothing about. Even a developer that I just met, when they ask what seems like a silly question to me, it may seem easy to dismiss them as a "junior", but I have no idea what they know or what I do not. It is my hope that we won't quickly write off somebody as a junior developer because they do not possess what we think is beginner knowledge. As I've learned, I've come to understand that even the most experienced developer has many things that they do not know.

As an open-source developer, I've learned to not be afraid of people finding out how "dumb" I am, or what I didn't know. That is actually a benefit of open-source, it allows others to see and improve in areas where I am not as strong. This means I learn and in the process we can deliver better software.

The Challenge

So as a challenge to myself, I'm planning on learning something new every day. A selfish benefit of blogging those things is that:

  • it makes it easier for me to remember
  • it is a place I can come back to when I want to see how much I've learned

I likely won't blog every day and the posts will be less formal and more error prone. It may not always be about techie stuff either, but it will always be something I didn't know until recently. Hopefully this will also be helpful to others as well. But I think more importantly, I hope this demonstrates that no matter how experienced, there is always something new to learn; and no matter how inexperienced another developer may seem, there is always something to learn from them.

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