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chantastic / ama

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What's your approach to learning new tech? #2

Closed chantastic closed 4 years ago

chantastic commented 4 years ago

via Twitter from Joe Previte

chantastic commented 4 years ago

I have a few techniques for learning new tech — depending on the tech.

For language

I learn new languages by typing them. When I came to JavaScript from PHP, I typed thru the entirety of underscore.

This gives me a way to really "feel" the language before trying to understand it.

For tools and frameworks

I do the tiniest possible thing I can think of with the new tech.

For React, that was literally a step counter for a musical transposer app.

In Webpack, Babel, and Microbundle that was a single transformed module.

With TypeScript it was vanilla JavaScript modules with typed props.

With CSS Custom Properties that was an Avatar element.

I think the biggest mistake that people make with new tech is learning too much at once React + Redux + React Router. They end up learning everything shallowly. I just keep doing the old thing and make the smallest behavioral change I can until I feel like I know everything about that new thing.