
Ask HN: Developers – how do you stay up to date? - skwee357
Hey there!<p>So some background. I&#x27;ve started to code around 15 years ago. I&#x27;ve started from C and C++, learned Java. Coded many things for fun (IRC Bot, A never finished OS Kernel, a never finished graphics engine, basic 2D Game with SFML, Qt Sprite editor, Java based ICQ Clone and etc).<p>At some point I&#x27;ve switched to PHP with HTML, CSS and JS which got me my first job around 10 years ago. Since then, I consider myself a web developer - a title that on one hand feeds me and pay my bills (and I&#x27;m very grateful for that) and on the other hand - is not really that fun and or rewarding (more on that later). Around 6 years ago I&#x27;ve developed interest in Node.js via side project which eventually helped me to land a Node.js job and get away for the slowly dying PHP. In my spare time I continued to explore Node.js, moved to TypeScript, developed skills in FE frameworks such as React.<p>And recently I woke up and found myself in my early thirties, no longer the young kid with &quot;unlimited&quot; free time to try and explore different areas and fields (game dev, os dev, desktop applications) and having troubles to run behind all the new tech and cool stuff that keeps popping up.<p>And here I stand, asking my self: How do I move next? Since the field that PHP and JavaScript occupies are relatively easy to get it, eventually it will be overfilled with younger developers and in order to stay in that market, I&#x27;ll need to provide extra on top of my Node.JS knowledge. And I eager to do more harder and rewarding stuff other than writing API Gateways that fetch and write data to DB.<p>So hence my question: What&#x27;s next? How do you stay up to date? Do you continue to explore your current field of employment and staying in a small set of languages? Do you try different fields? Do you have side projects and are they related to your jobs field? Are you trying to develop in one way (i.e. Backend Engineer) or trying to be the &quot;Jack of all trades&quot; (i.e. Backend, Frontend, Desktop, GameDev)?
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jowdones
I'm in my early 40's and started programming 20 years ago. Did C++ and Java
with touches of Perl (recently Python) and SQL databases. Also have 10+ years
in quant finance.

I gave up trying to "keep up with the Kardashians". I know software
development (and finance) but I'm aware of the fate of older guys if they need
a new job: in the increasingly disfunctional environment that's recruiting,
not only we're required to jump through more and more (automated) hoops, if
you're old you have to know everything. One wrong answer and you're out the
door.

So apart from doing my job and working on a finance / trading side project,
I'm limiting myself on recapping / reading common crap that's asked in
interviews. I sort of mentally settled for the fact that either I make it
through my side project or one day I'll be phased out. When you're phased out
it's always your fault, problem is no matter how much you struggle the way
things are progressing, failure, bankruptcy and homelessness are inevitable.

I'm thinking that rather than struggling desperately and still failing, it's
better to fail through just not caring.

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jowdones
There's an untranslatable phrase to describe the concept, in my language:
"decât să lucri de-a pula, mai bine stai de-a pula".

Hope the moderators won't delete it, since it contains some profanity.

