Curiosity without Direction



  • Hi,

    I don't wanna give much context here but I used to work in software development before as in .Net with C# and MS SQL and then through a weird change of circumstances I have ended up working on Data Visualisation making bar graphs and pie charts and what the fuck not. Technically what I was doing before and what I am doing now has no connection whatsoever. Not coding as a day job has brought back some of the charm programming initially had. Now I wanna learn R, brush up on Python, learn some Machine learning , learn Postgres , maybe start learning C# in a Jon skeetish way. I have so much I wanna do and I ve run into the same problem of not having the time to do all of those.I do not wanna ask what should I learn next. But I am interested in how if any of you have been in a situation where your dayjob being completely different has given a certain liberty to pursue what you want and how you focused all the excess energy into being productive. Right now I am hopping between too many things and If I concentrate on one thing too long then I panic cos I am not paying the other thing enough attention. I just feel lost and unproductive. Any pointers would help.



  • I find it helps to focus on a project rather than a technology. Have you got anything particular you want to make? If so, you can pick up what you need as you go along.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @stillwater said in Curiosity without Direction:

    Right now I am hopping between too many things and If I concentrate on one thing too long then I panic cos I am not paying the other thing enough attention.

    I know that particular feeling, and I have no idea what to do against that.

    @clatter said in Curiosity without Direction:

    I find it helps to focus on a project rather than a technology. Have you got anything particular you want to make?

    Addendum: It really helps if you don't start that project alone. If you join an existing one or team up with a friend / coworker, you're more likely to actually be productive.


  • BINNED

    One thing that worked for me was using the technology I wanted to learn in support of the job I was currently doing. For example, if you work as DBA and want to learn Haskell, try writing a SQL parser in Haskell and using that to examine stored procedure code for implicit type conversions (which are the root of all evil).


Log in to reply