“Do you want a job at Google, Amazon, or Facebook? Sign up for these courses to learn to code/data science/cloud etc.”
Or whatever these ads say.
I’m not going to complain about it. It’s great we have a lot of resources and great resources to learn to code or learn other aspects of software development.
It feels that in IT, we are good at moving sideways or even backward. This creates a fairly endless supply of courses which can lead to learning how to do the same thing in 10 different ways, just because something is currently trendy. E.g. learning how to do some simple export and import pipeline and how to group data in Python, SSIS, Informatica, C#, Java, R, Excel, SAS, etc.
I think if you are learning anything it is important to think about what your plan is. Is it a career, hobby, or just something that piqued your interest? And it will continually change as time goes on.
Now for my personal experience plugin. #supposedlyRelatable
At some point in my 20s, I’ve realized I’m really lazy and I don’t move much. How have I noticed it? It started to show as constant lower back pain! As you’ve guessed, being overweight wasn’t my first trigger!
Because I had no idea what to do, being fairly blank canvas when it came to physical prowess, I’ve looked up on youtube “exercise for beginners” and started with some exercise.
I bet there are millions of hours of exercise sessions you can do in your living room without equipment on youtube and it is a great start. How long before you won’t see any progress because you rotate 30 basics exercises just in slightly different volume, intensity, and order? I would guess that for most of us after a few months, but if your goal is just to move somehow, it’s fair to continue doing it.
Not many of us are interested in information technology just to do something and keep the brain busy, but to make a living and build a career.
“What the hell has, you being overweight and lazy, to do with learning programming?!!”
Now imagine you want to move from 20 air squats you’ve built over the last few months to, let’s say 100kg barbell squat.
What information do you need to do 20 air squats? If we are fairly blunt just to count from 1 to 20. “Squat down and stand back up” and that’s what most of the exercise videos will have. “Don’t go over your toes with your knees…” Yeah, I get it.
What happens when you start to progress and put a load on your back (#notAnInnuendo) a bit more? It’s not just “up and down” anymore. You will get into a realm of different problems that will start to become specific to you.
Why do you load your lower back too much? How to brace properly? Where do you hold the bar? How do the mechanics of your body work in relation to the length of your torso, legs, and arms? Do you have an anterior pelvic tilt? Should you have a wide stance or a narrow stance? Why are your hamstrings so tight all the time, causing you the strange pain? And how do you even start fixing these?!
A lot of IT courses are equal to “air squats with hands in front”, “air squats with hands at the back of your head”, “air squats with a pause at the bottom” – there are variations.
As you continue to learn more, there will be less and less of a path and it’s important to realize that it’s expected. It’s due to moving to a space of more complexity and dependencies, so answer move from “Use quick sort, if you want to sort an array.” to “Well, it depends on a lot of different aspects you need to consider.” and THE one correct answer will not exist and that is ok.
It’s worth spending some time to think about why are you learning something.
Just above average 