reports you might have noticed that I am
wearing a suit at least on my upper body
that is because we are not talking code
today we are talking about your career
as a program in this video I will talk
about how to stay relevant in the job
market as a program this video is not
about learning the framework that is
current being Bo it’s not even about
learning the up-and-coming one no I am
going to tell you to learn fundamentals
I recently made a video titled too many
tools and frameworks I posted it because
I was so often asked the question what
framework should I learn in the video my
response was that there is no such thing
as the best tool in general if you try
to find the ultimate tool to solve all
of your problems you’ll just end up with
something that looks like a leather man
which works but it’s better to know a
lot of specialized tools think the
software equivalent of our screwdriver
or hammer or soul and pick from those
set of tools when you are starting a new
project depending on what that project
is and what needs that project has I got
a great response from that video a lot
of it good but when looking at a lot of
the answers it was obvious that I was
just viewing the question from one
perspective I was viewing the question
from the standpoint of how to make the
best possible software but a lot of
people that asked the question what
framework should I learn are really
having an underlying question and that
underlying question is what skills
should I learn in order to stay relevant
as a programmer the easy cop-out answer
to that question is to just learn what
is popular as hell as of recording that
would be angular angular is a bizarrely
popular tool among organizations and you
will have work for years to come
if you know angular it could also work
to learn something like Microsoft
SharePoint or s ap the problem is that
tools of today will become obsolete you
tools are constantly being developed so
organizations constantly move on to new
and better tools and the tools of today
becomes the tools of yesterday ok I
could tell you to learn a tool that is
up-and-coming
as of recording that would be react and
flux which is most likely going to be in
enormous demand in the coming years but
it will happen again things change
seven years ago apps on phones did not
exist react will go away too
eventually and even if it doesn’t go
away it will at least be dethroned and
more modern tools will be in the
limelight so what to do are we forever
cursed to do this constant tooling rodeo
where we try to hold on to the job
market for dear life constantly learning
new tools as I flop up all over the
place like some bizarre game of
whack-a-mole well instead of trying to
predict the future which we humans are
really bad at just look at sci-fi movies
from the 60s instead you should learn
stuff that doesn’t change around a lot
learn the fundamentals that have been
figured out in the 70s and that has been
true since learn programming in general
don’t try to be a better angular program
or even a better JavaScript programmer
try to be a better programmer period
really take the time to learn the
programming language that your tools are
built with and learn the principles
behind your tool learn it so well that
you are able to build your own tools if
you know angular take the time to really
understand how JavaScript work
learn about its patterns learn about the
dependency injection learn the pattern
in general not just how angular does it
learn why it was invented where it came
from
and also learn why a lot of people think
it’s a bad part don’t get me wrong here
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use
tools you most definitely are you most
definitely should don’t use this video
as some excuse to start reinventing
wheels what I am saying is that you
should always be picking a tool because
you don’t want to write that too of
yourself you should not be picking it
because you can’t write that tool
yourself take the time to learn another
language that is way outside your
comfort zone if you know C learn Haskell
if you know Java learn rust or create
your own programming language it’s a lot
easier than one might think and it is a
great learning experience learning data
structures learn what a binary tree is
learn what a graph is learn about design
patterns learn about the facade pattern
or the observer pattern and and more
importantly anti-patterns
learn what a singleton really is and why
a lot of people think it is bad learn
about how unicode actually works that
alone puts you in the top 10 percent of
programmers learn about different kinds
of garbage collection learn what a
Turing machine is learn how memory works
I am absolutely not saying that you need
to go do all that to be a good
programmer I certainly don’t know half
of them I’m just spouting a lot of
examples to get you inspired and maybe
you can pick one of them that speaks to
you and and start doing that you can
also learn even more stable skills like
how humans work and interact in software
development projects all the cognitive
biases that we have that just makes us
fail software development project so
often there is an excellent book called
the mythical man-month
that was published in 1975 that dealt
with that subject and it is amazing and
just as relevant today you should read
that learning a popular tool or the next
big thing will get you a job but in
order to be relevant in the long term
you should learn programming not tools
so that you know what tools to use or
how to build them yourself if you can’t
find a tool that fits if you practice
programming well not just individual
tools or languages you will be a very
sought after programmer but you know
this is the interwebs these are just my
opinions what are your thoughts on this
comment down below or tweet me at MP
Jamie I’d love to hear from in case you
are new to this channel I publish one of
these videos every Monday where we try
to become better programmers by learning
interesting things but programming that
we did not know before make sure that
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