Learning by Working
I recently started working for EDITD which I am really enjoying. At the same time, I’m learning a lot. It’s been a crash course in a range of subjects; Python, Ruby, Chef, Git, AWS, Mongo etc. My thirst for knowledge is definitely being filled, I’m going to learn a huge amount very quicky.
Until and even during University most of my ‘programming knowledge’ was self taught. From Blogger to Wordpress; Garry’s Mod to Lua+Nginx; Command prompt to bash/SSH. University was more focused on the theoretical side of programming while, while interesting and useful from a progam-design perspective didn’t provide much practical experience. The combination of self teaching and University has pushed me to learn a huge amount over the last few years, covering many different areas, languages and theories of computer science.
Despite lots of learning, it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve been using my programming skills in a ’live’ environment. One where the code I write has a positive and noticable effect on a product used in the real world at scale. This is fantastic.
If there’s any point to this post it’s that I’m happy I chose to work for someone else rather than myself. Not only is it great to be involved in a quality product, but also to be part of a dedicated and extremely knowledgable team. If you’re young and have to make a similar choice, I would advise that you find a great company & team to work with. Following entrepreneur dreams can normally wait a few years, and the many things you’ll no doubt learn are well worth the wait.