#022 - Always Invest in Your Own Education
I spend over £1k in continuing personal development each year. The materials range in video training subscriptions, magazines, eBooks and hardback books.
I am obsessed with education and the never-ending pursuit of everyday learning. Admittedly, I have never been a top-notcher at school with regards to high-flying grades, but it doesn't deter me from learning from a wide variety of sources.
I decided to invest in a new programming teacher to better learn C#. I am getting bogged with the Treehouse track on C#. To better learn C#, I have pinned two potential teachers: Bob Tabor and Mosh Hamedani. I have opted to learn with Mosh, purely because he works as a software developer and has done so since 2001 and is currently a senior developer.
My preferred medium is video, as opposed to reading screeds of linear text. I absorb much more when I am digesting a video, as I like the visual cues and the audio feed. If there is closed captioning, then it's a personal bonus and benefit for me.
More importantly, I want to learn the best practices from folk working in the industry, whilst using the very same technologies and tools that I aspire to learn. I also feel the need for comprehensive learning, and so far, 'Code with Mosh' appears to deliver just that.
I will still consult the official documentation sites when it comes to reading on the fly, or when referring to hefty eBooks. I prefer eBooks to paper books, as you can quickly search a PDF document quicker than scuffing through hundreds of pages. Having said that, I do love the smell of a paperback book.
Once I am comfortable with the underlying concept of OOP in programmatic terms, then I would like to hop back to Treehouse and finish that track.
I still yearn to toy around GitHub projects using C# and possibly tinker with the Unity Engine, but I believe it is more important to learn the core programming principles and concepts, before boarding on the hype train of the latest libraries and development tools.
After all, I will be learning OOP via console app development, which may be more practical to churn logs in a GUI-driven application. Either way, I am excited to elevate my learning curve as I shift gear towards a new learning resource.
~Richard