First of all, we salute the medical personnel who are on the front lines.

Pestilence is a natural disaster, in front of which individuals appear very small. What we can do is to protect ourselves and take good care of our families, wear masks when we go out, and wash our hands and wrists when we come home. Of course, the inaction of some departments in Wuhan can be said to be a “man-made disaster” to some extent, and the online denunciation of the article has been overwhelming the sky, as a technical number I will not say more.

Some say 2019 is the worst year of the past decade, but it’s the best year of the next decade. Despite the existential crisis that many companies experienced in 2019, with layoffs, and the pneumonia epidemic in early 2020, I still think this view is a bit overblown. It is said that fast-moving markets are efficient markets. Remember the dotcom bubble of 2000? In fact, the so-called Internet bubble was the rise of the Internet, and most of the existing Internet giants rose during that period. In the tide of rapid change, the only thing we can do as small individuals is to embrace change and strive for progress.

The year 2020 is already 1/12. Actually, 12 is a very small denominator, and I don’t know if you’ve made 1/12 of your New Year’s resolutions. The State Council has issued a notice to extend the holiday, so programmers can work wherever they have a computer, so most of them can work remotely. But don’t think that this kind of life will last too long. Someone in my circle of friends has roughly calculated that in an enterprise with 400 employees, the monthly salary is 2 million yuan, the rent is 1.3 million yuan, the stock of goods with a short storage period is more than 1 million yuan, the tax quota is 500,000 yuan, and the loss of utilities is 200,000 yuan. We lost $5 million a month. The capitalists are not willing to see their profits lost like this.

To learn English

You can enter a foreign company by learning English. I think most people don’t know that Facebook hires in China every year, That Microsoft has a large recruiting program in Suzhou in 2019, and that Amazon, Hulu, and a lot of other foreign companies that people don’t hear about. From my observation, foreign companies and domestic companies seem to live in parallel worlds. We are very familiar with BAT, and as the goal of efforts, but in addition to 996 we have many choices.

Learning English will help improve your skills. While China has the best practices in massive data processing, the cutting-edge technology is abroad and published in English. Learning English can be the first time to grasp the technology dynamic, giving you a first-mover advantage. This is the timeliness of English. Most of the technical papers are published in English. In fact, many research and development achievements of domestic teams are also published in English. It is necessary to read the original source of technical theories in depth. This is English for technical depth.

In addition to reciting words and watching American TV series, which are all recommended ways to learn English, we programmers can read Technical blogs in English. A framework’s official website, Medium, Twitter, Or Facebook are all fine.

Learn math

I recommend Mathematics in Computer Science. It’s a big-name, authoritative book from Google and MIT, and the math in this book is really highly relevant to the programmer profession. The book is available for download in English on the MIT website, free of charge. See the advantages of learning English, at least you can save money.

Mathematics for Computer ScienceCourses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/sprin…

At Google, many managers who started out as code writers have a very solid grasp of the theoretical foundation, and it can even be said that the theoretical foundation is positively correlated with promotion. Technology is a means not an end, frameworks are tools, and frameworks are machines that stack business logic. The fundamental reason why programmers in many foreign companies can work until they are 50 or 60 years old is the difference between programmers and software engineers.

Many people are busy working overtime, ignoring the question: are they replaceable? ** This question is so important that it involves the programmer’s survival. How do you make sure you stay when the axe is laid off?

Some time ago I was wondering why companies like to reinvent the wheel. This is fundamentally the use of frameworks versus indigenous development. Frameworks can save time and improve efficiency, but because of their universality, they are not flexible enough when personalized solutions are needed, even in terms of performance. At this time, many powerful enterprises will choose independent research and development, when they build wheels good enough to go beyond the technical framework, they will accumulate enough technical barriers. This is what makes giants giants. They are consistently ahead of their rivals at what they are good at. Many people are not willing to study the foundation, and will miss the world-class enterprises.

I recommend only one useful book for you to read.

Read non-technical books

Here I recommend Wu Jun’s book. Many of you should have read his book The Beauty of Mathematics. I recommend his book firstly because of his technical background and secondly because he is relatively successful. As a computer scientist and well-known investor, Wu Jun’s engineering experience has a lot of reference for programmers. He has a wide range of knowledge and memorization. If we stretch out the timeline of our own career long enough, you might see some similarities between your long-term goals and his career.

Top of the Wave, Mystery of Silicon Valley, Insight, Attitude, Pattern, these are all books you can buy. I don’t recommend that you read it through zhihu membership or get a free membership. I recommend that you buy Kindle e-books or paper books that you can read over and over again. When you are at different stages in your life, the perspective of thinking can be very different, and when you have the opportunity to read the same book again, you can get different results.

These books are a guide. Gibran says in the Prophet, “We have gone too far and forgotten why we started.” When you are not confused and have a direction, you will be motivated and effective.

Get to know the framers

I’ve seen a lot of great framework participants on Github who don’t have many followers, or even a few. You can follow them, see what other projects they’re doing, what activities they’re involved in. When you understand what the a-list people do, you can understand the difference between yourself and the a-list people. If possible, even get to know them. It always pays to be friends with great people.

For channels, I recommend Github, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook…

I’m not going to expand it here.

entertainment

Documentary. Earth civilization, interstellar exploration, natural harmony, the rise of cities… These are far more meaningful than those idol dramas, at least they respect the facts, demonstrate rigorously, and satisfy our curiosity as well as expand our knowledge.

At a loose end. Do nothing, be it in a daze, or think. Let your mind rest, your body relax and wait for ideas to come to you. Don’t believe all the Internet crap about using fragmented time. If you can’t learn anything in fragments, the most effective way to learn is to learn in chunks. Your fragmented time does nothing but meet marketing KPIs and makes you anxious.

Time is limited, money is infinite. You are the most important. Take care of yourself.