You will never know everything. There's too much information out there and not enough time to learn it all. What this means is, sometimes we're wrong because we just don't know all of the answers. And that's fine—it's 100% OK to be wrong!
If you're wrong about something, it's not a big deal. It's an opportunity to do better, to learn something new, and grow. Your teammate will know more about a topic than you, just like you know more about a topic than them. That's the great thing about working on a team! You can teach each other about these topics, and your skills will probably compliment one another to the benefit of everyone.
My brain is pretty tired today and words are hard, so I'd like to open the comments for people to share their favorite resources for learning new things. Where do you like to learn about productivity? What books do you recommend on philosophy or ethics? Who's your favorite author of UI/UX books? Whatever you got, I want to hear it. :)
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Top comments (31)
Really like "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. It's the single best book about productivity I've ever read. One of his assertions that sticks with me is this: "Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them." In other words, we need to write down our ideas, our schedules, etc...so our brain is available for what it is best at...thinking. I like that.
I love that quote! It’s so true. I bet writing things down also pushes us to get those things done more quickly too. I’m going to check this book out. Thanks for the recommendation! 😊
😁😁😁 You're Welcome!
Not books but websites! I’ve been learning some new CSS tricks and both the Mozilla docs and the site ‘css tricks’ are wonderful resources.
This one?
css-tricks.com/
My favorite part of that site (other than the super interesting stuff to learn) is all of the beautiful gradients!!
Yes!
For keeping up with software development, I highly recommend pluralsight.com. For other, general purpose classes and lifelong learning I recommend Coursera :)
These both look great! Had not heard of Pluralsight before, but have heard good things about Coursera.
Coursera is suited for lifelong learners of any subject. You can find courses ranging from Computer Science to Arts and Biology. I would not recommend it to software professionals though since most courses are University level (except if you want to study a new area, like Machine Learning).
Pluralsight is the swiss army knife for professionals, it has courses aimed to software engineers ;)
Thanks for this elaboration! Makes total sense.
When it comes to web front-end I like Front-End Masters. They cover all the basics (JS/CSS) as well as the preominent frameworks. It is a different style of video courses with an actual class of students.
Since you asked about philosophy, I recommend Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's essentially the personal journal of the last good emperor of ancient Rome. It's full of little blurbs of how he dealt with events and encounters with people. It's extremely fun to read knowing you're peeking into a book never intended to be published for others to see.
Oooooo your last sentence makes this book sound extra juicy. I love me some juicy non-fiction. Memoirs are my favorite. 😈
I like this one as 101 on philosophy carneades.org
Thank you! I might be hanging out on that site soon. 😁
Is this the one? classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditat...
Yeah that looks like one of the translations of it. Im not sure how these ancient text books really work, but I guess they read differently depending on who translates the text. This is the one I was recommended: amazon.com/dp/0812968255/ref=cm_sw...
I am an ACM member which comes with a lot of cool privileges like their monthly Communications of the ACM. A lot of the ACM is geared towards academic level rather than practical stuff.
An other really awesome privilege is complete access to Safari Books Online. Which has a huge catalog of quality books, videos, etc. This normally costs something like $400/yr. An ACM membership is only $100/yr (or less if you are a student).
There are some requirements to ACM membership:
So if you quality I can really recommend joining to get access to a lot of great content.
If you don't qualify you can use unpaywall.org/ and arxiv.org/
Had never heard of these before, thank you! 😁
Wow! I didn’t realize you got so much stuff with them. Definitely looks like a good resource for those who qualify.
Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org/) is one of my favorite sites for finding random inspiration. There are tonsss of sited resources there—new and old. One of the first posts I read over there was Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook . Really great stuff.
There is this cool new developer community which has a lot of cool content: dev.to
I’ll have to check it out! ;)
You should start with "learn to learn" for example with the really excellent (free) course by Barbara Oakley - Coursera - Learning how to learn
You should take notes for everything you learn for example here's my notes (using mind mapping technique like personally grafcet diagram) for the first week of above course
You should make a dev journal proof I do it mysef everyday
By the way making a journal is a "secret" of 90% of very sucessfull people ;)
Off the field, I am presently reading "The subtle are of not giving a f*ck" by Mark Mansion. This book is about giving important to small things that matters to our life, that makes us happy not to big things that can ruin our life.
First off, I just want to say how much I enjoyed reading your article. It really hit the nail on the head – there's so much information out there, and it's practically impossible to know it all. Your words reminded me of those times when I've been unsure or mistaken about something, and you're absolutely right – it's totally fine to be wrong. In fact, it's part of the journey of growth and learning.