To improve your technical skills, become a concept collector!

One of the best pieces of engineering advice my dad ever gave me was: "𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫. 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐩, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐲".

I love this so much because it's easy to get overwhelmed in tech with all the coding languages and tools available to us. But when you think of yourself as a concept-collector you can start to identify patterns in the things you're learning.

For example, I noticed that no matter what framework I use, web development is essentially made up of these building blocks:

🌄 Views -> What's being displayed to the user

🎢 Events -> The different things that a user 'causes to happen'

🚨 Event Handling -> What we do after the user causes things to happen

🗳 Storage -> Data/information needs to be stored and retrieved

🚏 Routing and Controllers -> Allows us to create conceptual locations for where data/information should live

⚒ Optimization -> Making things run as smoothly as possible

In other words:

• The user needs to see something
• The user needs to interact with what they see and make things happen
• When they cause something to happen I need to decide what occurs next
• My data needs to be stored somewhere, and I need to be able to access it
• I use routes to allow the user to access data kept in different locations
• I optimize to make things run smoother

When you learn something new, try to grasp the deeper meaning of what's being done. 𝘊𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘺𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘹𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘯𝘥, 𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘢 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦. If you notice these patterns you'll be able to switch between frameworks and languages much more easily and confidently!

If you liked this blog post feel free to check out more of my tech content on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter and TikTok!