A wiseman’s advice

My dad once told me boy. Yes, literally, “boy” was the nickname he gave me for some reason. He said “you will never be satisfied if you always want to keep up with the latest and greatest gadgets”. He also said that sometimes its ok to be behind schedule a little bit. You see, my thought as a young, gadget addicted teenager was that. “This was some excuse he’d come up with just to have some breathing space from getting me the latest video games”. How naive I was though.

Looking back

Looking back from now, I can translate his words to match my current “hubby” and joint profession, which is software development. When I just started out about 5 years ago, I was very enthusiastic with just about every new technology I came across in my field. I dabbled into a whole bunch of “stuff” ranging from java, python, c, php, c sharp e.t.c.

Frustration, having to change strategy

Few years down the road, frustration started creeping in. Not because of my lack of ability in comprehending the technologies. But because it was near impossible in keeping up with technology and its rapid pace. Going like this for a while, I quickly realized I had used most of the time to keep up instead of digging into some specifics. I had to quickly change my strategy if I was to stay sane among all this craziness.

Obviously, one should have known this

I can guess what some of you may be thinking. That this realization should have been obvious. That one should know this. But let me tell you it isn’t so. It can be very easy for you to become so engrossed in this technology world that you sometime sacrifise quality for quantity because lets face it, the technology world just keeps getting more and more fascinating as the years move by.

Sensible persona kicking in

Now with this realization I had narrowed down my niche a little bit more. Not to say that I would soon start calling mself a “c sharp” developer or a “php” programmer because thats just plain silly. But I would narrow down my focus, and I would advice you to follow suit if you are starting out, because believe, me I came to realize the hard way that there were sone hidden truths behind my dad’s words.

Dont get it wrong, understand it

This may seem like a contradiction to a previous post I wrote earlier on about how learning a new programming language can help you become a better programmer. But if you look closely, you may come to realize that its more of a question of how much is enough? If you only know one language, say php, yes maybe knowing java later will be of use in teaching you good practise. On the other hand though if you know c, python and ruby, you probably may not gain much from learning a language like java.

Conclusion

So its mostly a judgement call and whichever you decide to make, I wish you the best of luck in your fabolous career. As usual, if you have something to share, please do let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.