To be a good programmer, we should follow some easy to adopt habits to keep our programming career long-lasting.
In this article, we’ll look at some learning habits we can adopt and how to adopt them.
Learn at Least One New Language Every Year
Learning one new programming language a year would help us see things from different perspectives.
We’ll see the similarities and differences between languages.
Also, we’ll learn about different paradigms that different language takes to help us write programs.
For instance, Java has a stricter object-oriented approach, whereas JavaScript takes on more of a mixed approach with a mix of functional and object-oriented programming.
Therefore, with such large differences that different programming languages have, we’ll definitely open our eyes by learning a new programming language each year.
We can learn them thanks to the wealth for free learning materials available online.
Read a Technical Book Every 2 Months
Reading technical books every 2 months will help us learn more technologies than if we just do the same thing every day.
There’re so many books out there about many topics that we can pick up a book easily and learn about everything we want.
Better yet, we can take notes and practice what they’re teaching. This applies to any technical book whether they’re about hard or soft skills.
We can always practice by using the knowledge learned from books at work or outside.
Even better, we can share our knowledge by blogging about them and making practice projects.
Read Nontechnical Books
Nontechnical books enrich our knowledge and wisdom just like technical books do.
We’re people, so we should know more about humanity so we can work with people better and see the world from a different perspective.
Participate in Online and Local Developer Groups
With the Internet being ubiquitous, we can open our eyes by joining online groups to learn more from other people.
Also, we can still join local developers like we always do to exchange our knowledge.
This way, we’ll always learn from each other and help people in ways that couldn’t just by staying at work.
It’s also a great way to find opportunities that we don’t expect to find before.
Experiment With Different Environments
We should learn how to use different operating systems and expose ourselves to different environments.
Even if we don’t use it much now doesn’t mean that we won’t have to know about them later.
Every place uses different environments, so we’ll bump into them eventually.
Therefore, if we’re using Windows a lot now, then we should consider using Mac or Linux.
We should never assume that everything will remain the same anytime or anywhere.
This applies to anything, like runtime environments like Node.js, PHP, or Ruby, or text editors like Visual Studio Code or Sublime, etc.
We can try different things to see what we like and learn a bit about each.
Staying Current on Technologies
We got to stay current on technologies since we don’t know when we’ll need to use them.
This is just a given since technologies change all the time.
We can read lots of stuff online with the proliferation of the Internet. Also, there’re tons of tutorials on free video sites like YouTube, and we can also pay for courses on sites like Udemy or Pluralsight.
The possibilities are endless, so we got lots of things to learn and practice.
Practicing is also important for internalizing knowledge. Otherwise, we probably just forget about them in no time.
Learn About the Ins and Outs of a Technology
Learning about the ins and outs of technology will pay off in dividends in the future.
We never know what we’ll like or when we’ll use them until we learn about them.
It’s the way that we find unexpected discoveries and help people in the process.
There’re many ways to learn about technologies. There’re forums like Reddit, and there’re many blogs published in the world that we can learn from.
Also, we have traditional books whether they’re available electronically or physically.
They’re both great resources for us to learn from. However, ebooks are searchable so that’s a big benefit over a physical book.
Conclusion
We should keep learning things as developers. There’re many ways to learn, including forums, blogs, books, videos, and many more ways that aren’t mentioned here.
To get a different perspective on technologies, we should learn a new programming language every year to get a different perspective on different programming paradigms.
