Technology learning methods for engineers

This blog is the translation of this presentation with getting approval of Mr.Iwase. Thank you Iwase san!
http://www.slideshare.net/iwashi86/ss-58640407

As long as we work (or live) as an engineer, we should keep learning forever. This presentation summarizes very well how to learn technology. I'd like to introduce it in English.

Engineers should keep learning continuously mainly because industry changes very quickly. If you would interview with candidates of engineers, which types do you decide to recruit?

• Engineers who can respond to changes
• Engineers who can NOT respond to changes

But of course business persons are busy and don't have enough time to learn. That's why we need to know methods to learn and to learn efficiently.

This blog is to know methods to learn.

What kinds of knowledge we need?

Here's the basic classification of knowledge.
For engineers, we need them all (of course we should have priority though). Fortunately we can find lots of types of methods and to learn IT like this figure below.

So the goal of this blog is to know methods to learn and try actually, then take advantage of it for your carrier in the future.

Explanation of each methods

Books (classic)

This does NOT work immediately but work later.
ex) Unix Network Programming, Volume 1

RFC / Essay

• Can work immediately depending on the types of your job.
• If you can read them in English, it's more useful when international conferences.

Source code reading

• Read source code on Github or something with finding in your favorite area.
• If you write blogs or give a presentation in IT study groups, you can be "evangelist" of its technology easily in Japan or Vietnam.

ex) Github trending code

E-learning

University or the other education institutions publish movies of classes for free.
We can find lots of contents from basic level to application level. Especially Udacity is very good because we can watch contents with subtitle in English.

Books

• Not classic books can be useful for systematic knowledge acquisition.
• We should read books aggressively with deciding the purpose to read.

ex) Microservice architecture and so on.

IT study groups

• We can find lots of study groups.
• Only "participation" is not recommended because we can't improve skill that much.
• When you only participate in it, you should set the purpose to know your relative skill level in compared with the other participants.
• The best way is to give a presentation of even lightening talk (LT).
  

Screencasts

• These are useful to know roughly how each technologies are, including coding.
• These are also good for coping and writing source code.

ex) RailsCasts, CodeAcademy

Podcasts

You can use commuting time. It's easy to use 1.5 times speed playback.

Firstly you can try to listen Rebuild.fm.

Web articles

Hacker News and so on.

Option

Follow leading experts on Twitter or something.

Quote

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
- Henry Ford

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About Tomohide Kakeya

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