../writing

How to get better at Tech.

by Abhigyan Bafna

Technology has kept growing rapidly ever since its Inception. With a huge list of fields in tech, there is always something to learn. This blog is an attempt to document my ideas to learn better.

!Mastery

The first programming language that I learnt was java. At that time my goal was to “master java”. It’s been 3 years since and I haven’t yet mastered it. Am I that slow?

Nope, it’s just borderline impossible to understand everything about a topic so it’s always better to aim for proficiency not mastery.

Tutorial Heaven

Tutorials are a low effort method to speedily consume knowledge. Tutorials can truly be heaven to speed up learning with ease but only IF you know when to stop.

The constant spoon feeding done by tutorials makes you learn things but seldom do things. It’s very easy to fall into this trap without realisation. Thats when the infamous Tutorial Hell begins. Hence always -

Learn by Doing

This is so simple to understand but yet often overlooked. While some tutorials have interactive bits and pieces, to truly get better at something you need to BUILD. It isn’t easy to build something from scratch with no help. Here is what I did while learning Web Development -

  1. Got comfortable around the basics using Tutorials and Documentation (HTML, CSS, JS)
  2. Made guided projects with the help of YT Videos. (Mini Projects)
  3. Thought about project ideas and built them with minimal help. (This Website)

The Bug Loop

When I just started out and encountered bugs, sometimes I tried to debug it for days and was still clueless. Most of the times, I exhausted myself and just shut down. Came back after a break and fixed it within minutes.

It’s great to try hard and come up with your own fix but it often becomes a loop where you can’t stop thinking about it and burn out. Break the bug loop before you burn out. It’s much more efficient and healthier. Not easy though.

Consistency

To no-one’s surprise consistency is very important. Another obvious fact is it’s very hard to maintain. I often fail at being consistent. Although, sometimes, when I genuinely focus on building a habit, it works out! Here is an example -

  1. I told myself that I’ll do LeetCode consistently. ( Affirm / Fix your goal )
  2. I failed within 4 days of starting. ( Be okay with failure )
  3. I discovered LeetCode gives a T-Shirt if you collect 5000 LeetCoins. ( Find a constant source of motivation )
  4. I started doing LeetCode daily challenges everyday after breakfast. Still do! ( Make it a habit )

Intuitively it might not seem hard to make new habits but we all are lazy creatures. Our brains hate making new habits due to the amount of energy it takes. They will try to make any and every excuse to let go of the habit. Unless your constant source of motivation is powerful enough to suppress the excuses, you will most likely fail. My brain also gave me a lot of excuses after starting LeetCode Daily. Here are some of them -

  1. Just buy a T-Shirt.
  2. We don’t even know Sorting Algorithms properly, let’s do a DSA Youtube playlist first.
  3. You like Development, why the heck are you doing CP.
  4. Let’s just do a startup, that way you don’t need to sit for Tech Interviews.

Challenges

Here’s a graph I made that says it all.

Optimism

It’s such a real possibility that you may give something your best shot and still fail at it. That really stings hard. It often brings a lot of sadness and overthinking. But it’s okay to fail, knowing you gave it your best shot right?

Life works in Highs and Lows. If you don’t believe me maybe your past can confirm the same. If you are at a low in life eventually you’ll get to your high, right?

----x----

I find blog writing immensely tough. This one took 4+ hours to finish. I kept trying to re-write everything at every second. A much better way would be to pen down the whole blog and then do reviews. Aim to follow that from the next one. Bye and Thank You for Reading!