There are two main ideas that engineers need to follow when learning technology.

  • First, technology is graded, to be specific, it is divided into short-lived and long-lived, but also divided into surface and essence. We need to learn all kinds of technologies, but we need to devote enough energy to the technologies and the nature of the technologies for longevity. That’s the lesson of the first story.
  • Second, the training of basic knowledge and ability needs long-term persistence, no matter at work or out of work. This is the inspiration of the second story.

Classification of technology

We’ve all heard the phrase “technology is cheap”, but that doesn’t mean we should learn technology “without distinction”. To put it bluntly, the most important thing for an engineer is “engineering ability”, which is to apply engineering ideas and technologies to solve practical problems. I have broken down the engineering capabilities into four rough levels. Note that they are all essential and the scale is not rigorous, but we can see a general trend:

  • For example, stability decreases from left to right, and the farther you go to the right, the shorter you tend to live.
  • For example, in terms of learning difficulty, not necessarily, but in general it goes down from left to right.
  • For example, pertinence tends to increase gradually from left to right, that is, the farther to the right, the more specific the problem.

Typical misunderstandings in specific technology learning

  • Too much attention is paid to configuration and usage, ignoring principles and scenario analysis
  • Too much attention is paid to the syntax and language skills of the programming language and too little attention is paid to the modes of thinking and writing the language. (shocked)
  • Too much focus on concrete implementation logic, ignoring design considerations and trade-offs
  • Direct learning patterns and ideas, divorced from concrete practice

Basic knowledge and ability

  • Data structures, algorithms, networks, etc
  • Programming ability

Further reading

  • There is an article “Stop Learning Frameworks” more simple, but also more extreme, in the programmer community set off a storm, translation