## Dead ends and changing topography
-### FIXME
+Sometimes we'll find ourselves learning something that's a dead end. We look at our progress and see no real improvement. We don't find the topic as engaging or as exciting as we'd imagined. We realize that what we're learning is an evolutionary dead-end in the realm of programming. What then?
-Sometimes we'll find ourselves learning something that's a dead end. We're not making the progress that we think we should be making. We're not finding it as engaging or as exciting as we'd imagined. We're realizing that what we're learning is an evolutionary dead-end in the realm of programming. What then?
+Part of our learning process is understanding that our expectations of how something will turn out can be completely different from how things actually do turn out. We envision all sorts of rewards and platitudes that never come. Does that mean we're at a dead end? I don't think so. What it might be is a case where what we expect we'd be doing with our newfound knowledge isn't panning out. Or we may find that our expectations for how quickly we'd learn the topic aren't being met and we see more and more ahead of us. We may also expect that our career will be bolstered by learning this topic and yet all we hear from the job market is resounding silence.
-Part of our learning process is realizing that our expectations of how something will turn out can be completely different from how things actually turn out. We envision all sorts of rewards and platitudes that never come. Does that mean we're at a dead end? I don't think so. What it might be is a case where we brought our expectations for how we thought we'd be learning and we're now realizing that those expectations aren't being met. Our expectations of our progress may be too high, or we may find that the topic is much less interesting than we thought.
+Our engagement is related to our expectations. Programming demands a certain amount of fun and reward and if we're not finding the experience fun or rewarding then we're unlikely to want to continue being engaged with learning that topic. Our minds begin wanting something else to engage us and we crave anything other than to continue with this learning process. After all, shouldn't we be enjoying this? If there's no engagement and enjoyment then the learning becomes drudgery. We become distracted more easily while trying to learn and our minds drift away rather than focus on our learning experience.
-Our engagement is related to our expectations. Programming demands a certain amount of fun and reward and if we're not finding the experience fun or rewarding then we're more likely not to engage with whatever topic we're learning. When we're not engaged with the material we dread learning the material and wish we were doing anything else. We wonder if we're doing the right thing by still trying to learn this. Shouldn't we be enjoying this?
+And then there's the problem of learning things that are evolutionary dead ends. The world of computing is littered with the remains of technologies and methodologies that are either no longer relevant or are considered "out-of-fashion". What once was cutting edge is now considered moribund, and the community around that technology / methodology scoot on to new technology / methodologies and leave their previous work as a technological ghost town. When we mention that we're learning these things we get curious looks from developers when we mention what we're learning. "Why would you learn that? We've moved on to this other thing". It's as if we've just heard about a party and arrive just in time to see the clean-up crew picking up litter and breaking down the tables and chairs. We find our support withering from neglect and our motivation to learn dwindles.
-And then there's the things that we're learning that are evolutionary dead ends. The community of developers around this concept have abandoned it in favor of something else: new technology, new methodology, or just plain lack of engagement. We find ourselves getting curious looks from developers when we mention what we're learning. "Why would you learn that? We've moved on to this other thing". We find our support withering from neglect and our motivation to learn dwindles.
+### FIXME
-All three of these can pose their own problems for learning but it's up to us to take a more critical look at why we started this whole process of learning. What did we bring into this?
+All of these can pose their own problems for learning but it's up to us to take a more critical look at why we started this whole process of learning. What did we bring into this?
In each of these cases we brought our expectations of how the learning would progress. We brought the expectation that it would always be fun, engaging, and relevant. Sometimes our expectations about learning do pan out, but when they don't we get discouraged and disappointed.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff