On and off in a year’s time, has been reading some books, gradually realized the infinite benefits, so feel and write some experience.

As a technician, in the early days, MY personal learning method was to search engines and read some technical articles to obtain the knowledge I wanted, because it was mostly to solve some problems in work. It’s the simplest and most straightforward way. The problem is there. It’s impossible to turn over hundreds of pages to find a solution.

Later, with the skill level of ascension, also accumulated some experience of solving the problem, this study way slowly beginning to change, to be able to discern the stand or fall of online articles, begin to pay close attention to some excellent personal blog, some good quality technical articles series, see some content will be more in-depth, no longer to solve the problem as the first priority, and begin to pay close attention to the principle, source, and so on. I will also start to read some books, but these books have a characteristic of a single direction or a specific technology, and have a close relationship with the technology I work with. Such as Java Core Ideas, GOF Design Patterns, Spring XXX, Nginx In Action XXX, and similar books.

Later, I started to do some work in team management, but the busy and pressure of work indirectly led to the failure to develop a continuous reading habit. You can say this is an excuse, and I accept it. After all, I am lazy. Fortunately, MY passion for technology has always been with me, and I have been learning and trying new technology stacks and directions. As I have been fond of structural things since CHILDHOOD, I gradually began to learn architecture. I think the above is also the psychological process of most people.

As time went on, I began to encounter some bottlenecks and difficulties, such as:

  • I have been practicing microservice system since very early, from the earliest Dubbo based to the later SpringCloud, to the current kubernetes-based cloud native, I can fully practice the whole process, solve some frequently encountered problems, and understand the key points of the whole architecture. However, in some need to communicate and share the occasion often feel some words poor, can not say!
  • A lot of things finished, want to sum up, but can not properly describe all the technical details, or rise to the theoretical height!
  • Knowledge fragmentation, can not effectively get through all the knowledge points, establish their own knowledge system!

In a word, with the change of position and responsibility, our goal will be higher and higher, such as architect, R&D director or even CTO, so we have higher requirements for improving our own knowledge system, and we are required to express, share and communicate more to drive people around us and the whole team.

What I get the most from reading is that the originally fragmented knowledge system begins to be gradually improved, and the communication with others is clearly organized. The content of communication is also separated from many technical details and turned into a summary of the original reason. When reading, many times appear “I depend, this I know, originally is behind this meaning”, “oh ~ ~ this should say so with a professional noun” and so on similar feeling, originally scattered point, line, surface slowly combined together, a lot of originally ignorant vague part also become clear.

There are also some troubles in the process of reading, for example, when I was impressed, I forgot after reading, and I need to turn over again when I need to use it. However, I think the problem is not big, reading hundreds of times, its meaning shows itself. Next, I will write some reading notes to deepen my memory, summarize the viewpoints and theories in the book, and add some thoughts of my own.

Is it ok not to read? I think you can, in a sense, write code and implement business. Just like architecture, architecture itself only describes the quality attributes of the application, and does not affect the functions of the application. Regardless of the quality attributes, the business attributes provided by individual applications or microservices are theoretically consistent. But who wants to code their whole life? Of course, reading is only a way, any suitable for their own way of learning should be approved!