For several months, I was a mentor in a Python backend development course. For me, this was a great, albeit unpaid, opportunity to develop my soft skills in dealing with beginners. For one of the meetings with the students, I prepared a speech in which I shared my experience of learning and overcoming problems.
Today I will discuss one of the points from that speech. The topic in the headline is «Continuous Learning».
IT is about new technologies. New for the world, but primarily new for us — developers. Therefore, be prepared to continuously gain new knowledge. Get used to the fact that you need to put in your own effort to understand, learn and figure something out. Accept the idea that you will constantly need to learn something new.
The development field is constantly changing, new technologies, libraries, programming languages are appearing. This can cause stress for beginners as they feel the pressure to always stay on trend. However, the paradox is that continuous learning, properly organized and integrated into the work process, can help cope with this pressure.
Be prepared to learn throughout your career. This may seem daunting, but it also makes the developer profession interesting and highly paid.
Develop the right approach to learning. Let’s consider a situation: you buy a course that promises to introduce you to some profession (developer, data engineer, devops, etc.). While going through the course, you come across topics necessary for understanding the material in the course not being covered. Or even worse: the course sends you to Google some material/article/documentation. What is this? After all, I paid money for the prepared material!
I’m sure students of online courses from various popular schools are well acquainted with this situation. So,
- This situation teaches you an incredibly useful skill — to search for information and find answers to questions.
- By calming down and getting used to such situations, you are emotionally preparing yourself for work processes, when it is necessary to implement technology/framework/library, and there is no purchased course for it (naturally).
- By studying new materials, you are actually adding lines to your professional resume.
Continuous learning not only allows you to maintain the relevance of your skills and knowledge but also reduces the stress associated with the constantly changing IT sphere. Therefore, perceive it as an opportunity for growth and development, not as a source of additional stress.