On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 17:46, Rakesh <rakesh.mailgro...@gmail.com> wrote: > this is targeted at those slightly older developers out there who have > been coding for a while now and consider themselves rather good at > what they do.
I consider myself as one of the "older developers" in the sense of overall software development experience which is about 25 years - I wish I could say that I have 25 years of Java experience ;-) , but I have not. I am sure that I am one of those here with the shortest Java history, which for me is now only about 2 years so I do not consider myself good in Java. > How do you make time to keep up to date? I mean, I have a full time > job which leaves me knackered in the evenings and a wife and son who > make sure I am not left alone at the weekend. I am pretty much in your situation: Full-time job + wife + 2 children < 5. I learned Java only partly at home - for a good part also in the office. They key reason is: I am quite efficiently doing the rest of my job, so I have spare time. I started with Java about 2 years ago and about 1 year ago the real Java projects started and now it is part of my job doing Java (not 100 % because I have a lot of legacy projects out in the wild but they are running quite stable and need less and less maintenance. The company I am working for is mainly on .net so I am an outlaw here, but I have a current project where running on Linux is part of the requirement, so the company already wins from my persistance on Java. :) - I think, if you want to do Android or Scala or whatever, there could be room in your current job for doing this - it's always worth to consider. For keeping up to date: First thing is: Do all the rest efficiently - then you have more time also in the office for keeping up to date. Don't forget that the company you are working for is gaining from your knowledge so why doing this ONLY in your private time? Second: It is crucial to seperate the bullshit from real interesting and really new content. This means: Take all new stuff with a critical view. 80 % of the news is for the bin because either not new or not relevant for your current work and either not for your future plans. If you got the first two most important things then subscribe to RSS feeds and podcasts. With RSS feeds you are getting more news quickly done when speed reading through them. Podcasts are better from the general input quality point of view in my opinion - but it also takes longer to get through them (I don't know anybody who can speed listen even if there are people - like in the full circle magazine - who can speed talk ;-) ). And last but not least there are the forums - like this - where I also learn a lot. At this opportunity: Many thanks to you all! To be more efficient it also helps reading personal development feeds and I even took a coach for a once per week for a few months. That helped me a lot increasing my overall efficiency. > I've been meaning to sit down and learn Scala, GWT, Spring 3.0 but I > just don't get the time. >From RSS feeds and podcasts you get an overview, but you will not really learn one of those you mentioned. This can only be done by practicing. My first real world Java program in the company was an importer which I wrote as part of a bigger project where my part was only to write the first-time importer. Nobody either knew that I wrote it in Java, but for me it was practice on a real project and during office + day time - the best what can happen. For GWT I also only played around a little with it so far. For really learning it a small real-world project (maybe something for internal use) would be a good start. I have an idea in the queue but so far no time for it. > Any one else been in this position? How did you solve it? Despite all the optimizations I still do not consider the challenge of keeping up to date to be solved for me. I also switched completely to Linux about a year ago (I mean also at work - at home I used it already longer) and participate in the community with testing. So I do a lot in the nights and get to bed late. :-( When I started my career I wanted to be an "IT expert" - in those days there was a very little chance to get an overall expert - nowadays this is obviously impossible. The problem is: You should specialize more and more to be really good in one or very few things. Then one can easily loose the connection to the rest and indeed I consider this a big problem: A lot of people, companies and products lack of good integration or view for the big picture. It IS difficult to be good in a wider area. On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 17:56, Robert Casto <casto.rob...@gmail.com> wrote: > I also listen to other pod casts when exercising or driving to/from work. I > take books with me to my kids activities. When they are doing something, my > attention is there. Before the concert or ceremony, I'll read a bit and try > to catch up on something. Yeah, I also use such spare minutes. Currently I also don't have much time for exercising, but what I do is: I need to take 3 public transport lines to get to work. Mostly I skip the last and walk, but lately I also skip the second and this means more than half an hour walk in the morning. In total I have about one hour listening to podcasts in the morning. And half an hour at noon. When the weather is good I buy a sandwich and then go for a walk listening to the podcasts. This means doing 3 things at the same time: Exercise, eat and learn. :-) On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 19:33, Manfred Moser <manf...@mosabuam.com> wrote: > I agree with Robert. I am married with three little boys under 5 and I > find myself listening to podcast whenever possible. Since I have a mobile > phone I also get to keep up with my RSS feeds in Google reader much better > (subscribed to > 100 feeds easily). Reading RSS feeds on the mobile phone (like doing everything else rather than talking) I find very inefficient. But of course e.g. when waiting at a doctor I use the mobile phone for surfing also - but only if I didn't carry my notebook along. > And magazines and books lay around the house in multiple places so there > is never an unused second. I still would love to do much more but family > first.. If you can do this - good. I am personally bad in reading multiple books and then only a paragraph here and there. When I am reading a book - after an interuption I need to go back about two paragraphs. On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 20:09, Robert Casto <casto.rob...@gmail.com> wrote: > I really struggled before because I was doing JDK 1.4 all the time. Puhh - this is the second case I am aware of, where 1.4 is still used. I wonder, why this is still around... On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 23:35, Peter Becker <peter.becker...@gmail.com> wrote: > This might be not suitable for everyone, but I find the combination of > (public transport + netbook + tethering) extremely helpful. OTOH I am > currently accepting a commute of 1h+ as opposed to ~30min direct drive, I am > not sure I'll keep that up. Similar experience for me. Although I don't have a netbook - I use my normal laptop. I do my private emails also often with laptop + mobile internet stick. My normal desktop Ubuntu is up in less than a minute (+ login) and down in less than 30 seconds so it makes sense with a time slot of 30 minutes and up. On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 01:46, Chris Adamson <invalidn...@gmail.com> wrote: > Who says your private developer time has to be in the evening? I do my > "extra" time, like book-writing and studying new stuff, first thing in > the morning (after a little wake-up web surfing and exercise). I tried that also, but for example getting up at 6:00 does not mean that I have a bigger time slot then. It might be that my son wakes up at 7:00 instead of 8:00 or 9:00 as usual. Mostly when I tried to do something in the morning he got up at 7:00. So in the late evenings it is usually the best opportunity to do something - maybe also because the somehow "open end". Some things can't be really estimated and need an open end in the plan. > that pushes off your "knackered" time to the last hour of your work > day, but depending on your personal cycles, it might be something to > try. Yes, personal cycles is important - and not only your's - also those of the rest of the family. ;-) > At different times in my life, I've worked day, evening, and overnight > shifts, and I've found I really like jumping in at 5:30 AM when nobody > else is up (well, except for Europe…) Yep, here in Europe (Austria in my case) some get up very early but some also very late - so there is basically no real quiet time. :-( > You mention you have a family. Did you find you got more ambitious and > interested in maintaining your skills after having kids? I can't > believe how much time I wasted back when I had so much of it. Indeed, when I remember older times, I wasted a lot of time learning stuff, where I was either inefficient in learning and/or I never had any practical or financial gain from that. But it is not always easy to know in the beginning what will be wasted time and what not... - Of course having less time you cut down on things that are less promising (in the sense of outcome). Best regards and my best wishes - be the time with you, Martin. -- Martin Wildam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
