Thoughts on previous experiences

Most of the time we keep on growing, learning and once we have been through a situation, problem, project , we end up adding knowledge to our life. Usually I keep applying the previous knowledge on the new projects/problems that I need to solve but there is also a problem that sometimes arises when you are get used to use the same stack you have been using for years to solve a problem, you stop learning. In the area that I work, software is constantly evolving and so are technologies and hardware and it is required that you keep on updating your tools. This might not mean that previous experience is not useful but most of the time there is an easier way to solve the same problem, there is something built in to solve the problem or in few cases the problem will not show up.
I used to write lots of bash scripts and then added lots of things based on PHP, moved to ruby and python and currently I love doing stuff in NodeJS specially those small scripts that are very fast to write and solve specific problems. I have no issue on changing of technologies, using X or Y language solving the same problem and the idea is that the tools I've been using are pretty much the same and not language based and still applicable to any other problem/solving situation. I often see people learning and even mastering X language but not really getting better at solving the problem itself they just apply what I call proved recipes to get around an specific problem and that might work for most cases and the thing is that I get paid to work on those specific cases where there is not proven way to solve the problem.
I love to learn and do things myself, who will create a web framework applying MVC just to probe that you can build our own? Yep that was me, I did it in fact for the depth learning experience I got from that when I was working in web development. Now I work on Quality Assurance pretty much writing and automating tests to verify that everything works as it is expected but sometimes there are few tasks that are very challenging, I love those. I'm usually the one stepping in when there is something new that needs to be develop, implemented and then teach coworkers how to use that thing.
It is not as easy as it might sound but usually my understanding of those things improve my knowledge and get me where I want, testing and learning new stuff. Why people avoid doing that? Why people marry X technology or language? And here I am sharing my past experiences in a beta social platform, testing it out before most of my coworkers and colleagues will, I guess I will tell: been there, done that but the real reason is that most will struggle with the feeling of not knowing really what to do, not knowing which recipe to follow and not bothering to learn new recipes that use different ingredients just because they remember how good was the old meal cooked following the good old recipe with the good old ingredients and what they got used to.
Why change? I truly don't know if that is something good or not but once I start to get bored on a job might consider changing for a new more challenging and hopefully something that I've never done before, but every past job experience have helped to get hired for the new more challenging one, every past knowledge is still applicable for the next one. I remember the feeling when I left my first job and did not made a copy of the small projects I worked on, I remember even a year later saying to myself: _ you should've made a copy of that great script_ because I could apply that to this new problem, the fact is that I stopped doing that and thinking that way because even tho good proven recipes work most of the time you will want to learn enough, change languages learn every piece of logic and someday you will be the one writing those beautiful scripts instead of looking for someone else's script. You will still get around with what you have built in your brain, no one can really take that away from you, so please spend time exercising that muscle and get it fit for whenever you might need it and make good use of it.

Related articles that you might like:

• Thoughts on knowledge
• Thoughts on patience and perseverance
• Thoughts on reading
• Thoughts on failure
• Thoughts on effort results

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@raserrano - Developer

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