

Ask YC: What do you do to excel at your job ? - wh

What do you do to grow yourself in your career apart from your job ?
like coding hobby projects, open source, reading books,  reading blogs etc..care to share your thoughts.
======
hugs
For me, it's hacking open-source hardware -- specifically, creating small
gadgets based on the Arduino platform. After several days of coding, it's nice
to switch gears and pick up a soldering gun. There's something magical about a
blinking LED that you wired up yourself. How that helps my career, I don't
know... but when the robot revolution finally arrives, I'll know how to
resolder those suckers.

------
raju
Maybe its just me, but asking this question to HN readers is your answer in
itself. I personally can't thin of too many colleagues of mine who read HN,
let alone other programming blogs/aggregators (programming.reddit etc).

Personally, I read a lot, and write some code. I need to write more code than
I read, but its a good start. And a lot of what I read does not have to be
necessarily technoloy specific, rather books like "Clean Code" and "Code
Complete", Intro To Algorithms etc, patterns, architectures etc.

I also tend to read a lot of self-help (GTD), business (Good to Great) and
career specific books (Career Intensity) and similar blogs and sites.

In my experience, it helps to try and really really practice something. As
Bruce Lee once said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,
but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

To give you an example, I am currently reading Clean Code, and one of the
pieces of advice is "A method should do one thing, and one thing only".
Nothing new there, but normally I do take the time and effort to keep my code
short and clean, but this book says that exception handling (in Java) IS ONE
thing. So your method should not attempt to do exception handling as well as
some other piece of functionality. For the past 3 days at work, I have tried
to do that, not because the book says it, but because I did not think of it
that way, and I want to give it a whirl before I make my mind up.

A lot of people I know don't read, and even those who do, don't practice it.
If you want to grow - learn, practice, measure, then either accept it, or
throw it away.

Update - Other HN readers have other pieces of advice that I did not add here.
But working sample projects, reading documentation, tutorials online (I refer
to them as the magazine version of tech books :D) all help

------
sidsavara
Read Hacker News

Really though, it's how I learn about what's going on. I don't necessarily
learn every new framework that's released here or become an expert on every
new web tool - but at least I'm exposed to it.

And I also do the exact opposite: take breaks away from all stimulation and
just code on a project until it's done, preferably in something new
(framework, language, paradigm) or at least in a new domain.

------
truebosko
Mainly it comes down to setting aside some time to read (see: every morning)
and at least one or two days a week to just sit down at my computer and hack
away. Wether it be a long-term project or just some random script trying to
achieve something it feels good to learn something new.

I also try to blog and write down my findings which helps me further
understand everything especially when I get feedback.

This week I spent time getting dual monitors working on my Ubuntu partition.
It was rough because my ATI card does not handle well on Linux so it took a
lot of reading, trial and error, and understanding of how it all works. Now, I
am writing this from Ubuntu and have my monitors working great.

It was essentially an assignment. I set a goal, worked on it, studied for it,
and "finished" the assignment by getting it working and now I have all this
new knowledge about xorg and ATI cards on Linux that I thought I would never
care about

------
bkj123
I set aside a few hours a week to work on a specific project that may lead to
great work or not. This is outside of my regular gigs. Other than that I, as
my mother-in-law say, "putz" (spell?). You know, I'll paint a little, work out
in the shop, definitely hang with family and friends, try a new exercise. You
get the picture.

------
bigthboy
With me, I'm more of a business person than a coding person (though I do
code)... So when I'm not explicitly working on the various aspects of my
venture I am usually reading blogs and various business publications. I do
read books every now and then, more often I read reference manuals =P.

------
hs
i keep natural 'no-tech' aquarium as a hobby

after reading 'ecology of planted aquarium by Diana Walstad', i basically say
bye bye to weekly water change, lighting, aerator, pump, fertilizers and other
fancy stuffs

now i only have soil (any, cheap will do), gravel, water, plants and fish -
the fish food and mulm become fert ... along with semiannual water change

the algae problem is combatted with fast growing emergent (root+in-water+out-
water stem) plant ... the plants will take nutrient faster (from
soil+water+air) than the algae (from water alone) ever will

relevance to my work? now i use fewer, simpler (but powerful) tools with rapid
iterations (hopefully at faster rate than bug creation)

------
jasonlbaptiste
Honest truth, a LOT of what ive learned technology wise is through tinkering
around with open source software. It's a great place for people to start
understanding web dev, server configuration, moderating, community,etc.

------
noodle
i keep myself abreast of the latest trends and technologies while the other
people don't [have time to do so because they're all older people raising
families]. so, when it comes to updating the technology of the product, i'm in
first chair.

and it worked wonderfully. i get to hack around with cutting edge stuff,
building prototypes to see if it works for us.

------
qhoxie
I make time to correct outside things that annoy or disrupt my work and open
source the solutions.

------
Mystalic
I write and blog on the side. Gives me different perspective and networking
opportunities.

------
mannylee1
Hand Coding HTML/CSS

------
quasimojo
draft in the wake of people who fetishize work.

