There’s too much noise out there

The most important lessons I’ve learned.

I’ve been trying to navigate this world and this career much like everybody else. Recently I’ve stumbled on something that took me way too long to accept or appreciate. It’s being simple! In all walks and abstractions of life. It’s a lesson that can be manifested in many different ways, and it’s principles stretch their power into many of life’s common mantras.

Trust but verify

Don’t believe everything people say. I could spend 3 months reading random stuff online (I have) and learn more within 5 minutes from a Sophie Wilson interview or from the first 5 pages of a Donald Knuth book.

If you want to learn FAST. verify your sources. The only difference between people who learn fast and people who learn slowly is a lot of noise and practice.

Consistently, the most profound stuff I frequently encounter is stuff I read in books used in the curriculum at reputable schools.

Social media is not your friend nor is it even a half-decent source of news. In fact, I’d say these things are intellectually damaging.

If I collected everything technical I’ve read online I’ de say with confidence that up to 50% of it was flatly incorrect.

For example, If anybody tells you something cannot be solved without recursion… incorrect. Every recursive operation can be expressed as a loop with a stack.

Your Basics are your greatest weapons.

Let’s bring it back to programming. I used to really enjoy big new frameworks. I thought they were amazing and helped me solve problems faster.

Not really the case.

Frameworks solve specific problems. Most applications don’t have those problems. At the end of the day, there’s a good chance you can build whatever you want without any npm modules or black box dependencies or any other bloated architecture.

HTML, CSS, JS, HTTP, SQL.

Each of these things goes deep, and each of these things can solve an unbelievable list of problems. Most programmers don’t know how to use them all properly. (myself included)