Feb 24, 2022
Why Do Great Developers Never Stop Learning?
Stay competitive at job market? Or something more important?
From learning to code as a beginner to working at a developer job as a professional, learning never stops. AsWe need to constantly iterate between studying and building projects. There are two big reasons for us as developers to keep up learning and growing. The first reason is an obvious one that we need to keep ourselves competitive at the job market while the other one is actually guiding you to living a life with purpose and value.
Reason 1: Technology Moves & Evolves Fast — So Should Us!
“Never stop learning and adapting. The world will always be changing. If you limit yourself to what you knew and what you were comfortable with earlier in your life, you will grow increasingly frustrated with your surroundings as you age.” — David Niven
As a majority wants to stay competitive in the job market until they retired, so they are motivated to be in charge of their learnings. And a few want to build great products to enhance human’s experience on this planet, which also motivates them to strive to be better every day. We need to get in charge of our learning to keep our competitiveness in the job market. Regardless which type you are, constant learning process is part of our life.
Just working on repetitive tasks at job for many years would definitely grant you a many-year working experience credit, but sadly, you cannot fool your future self. Why I say this? Because during my three years of working as a developer, I saw some interesting things that the real problem solving skills, and the other important tech skills among the same years of professionals varied insanely a lot. More sadly, some companies don’t appreciate the great developers they have and simply ignore them, which is the something I felt deeply from the previous company I worked for. But I believe firmly that no one can stop you from getting better and better in your whole life.
We are indeed gaining job experiences from our jobs, developing new skills from our pet projects we’re experimental with, and significantly grow ourself to reach the full potential of ourselves from building the projects we are committed to.
Reason 2: Constantly Striving Matters the Most for an Individual Human Being
“There is no need to be perfect. But are you constantly striving to be better that is all that matters.” — Sadhguru
Don’t take yourselves too seriously because you’re not important to any one else, except to yourself, but, constantly strive to getting better which matters the most to you as an individual.
“The only purpose of life for this piece of life to find its ultimate possibility. …the only purpose that every life has, is that it wants to grow to its full potential, not being something else.” — Sadhguru
As developers, we should feel grateful for the constant changes and evolve of technologies in modern days because they are fitting into our daily strive process as a human being living on this planet. By crafting our skills constantly, we could be more capable of building amazing projects we never expected, and more importantly, the greatness of programming could enable us to achieve our so many goals, big or small. For example, we are probably not satisfied by working on the same project for many years for the same company. As long as we are open-minded, empowered with a good perception of our surroundings, we would figure out a better way to reach our full potentials.
Conclusion
Nearly all of us as developers need to keep learning in order to stay competitive at job market, keeping up with plans of promotion and career progression. However, constant striving to be better every single day is the ONLY purpose of every individual on this planet. If you think you could reach your full potential at your job, then work on that. But if you believe the only way to blossom to the fullest possibility as a human being who happens to know coding is building his/her own dreams (products, services, etc.), then go for it!
P.S. I recently quit my job to start building my own products. Any progress or what I have learnt from the journey would be updated in next posts. Thanks for being my audience.
