How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Long And Winding Road

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

I’m always fascinated by the idea of learning. I’m not only referring to the stuff learned at school, but learning in general. I am so conscious about the process of learning that for me, learning is an experience itself. It’s pretty amazing that at one time you don’t have a clue about something, and next thing you know, in like 10 years, you’re already an expert. Only the most annoying person, can claim to achieve this “basic to expert” transition feat in about 10mins or less, depending on the number of people to annoy.

As a programmer by trade, it is important for me to learn new things. And in the wave of the Web, there’s always a new way to do something everyday. So to keep me updated, so I say to my boss, I read a lot of porn blogs and articles of interesting people and take a piece or two of their ideas. But based on experience, I can only learn the thing if I need it urgently, or in other words deadline nearing.

Say for example, the very first time I really learned how to code for web is that when I have this commissioned web project for a sports house store (I will not divulge the name of the store) and all I know are few HTML tags which includes my favorite <marquee> tag. So in a small amount of time I learned JavaScript and the concept of basic e-commerce or else we have to payback the client’s down payment i already used to upgrade my PC. So learning is accelerated when there is urgency, or when your ass is on the line and for me it is the best way to learn something. Reading something and understanding it but not experiencing it immediately is not learning. 
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