May 8, 2013

How to Learn a New Programming Skill

I was really surprised with the positive reception 10 Reasons Why You’re Failing to Realize Your Potential as a Developer received after it got picked up on Hacker News and a few other places. One theme that became immediately clear to me in some of the feedback in the comments and in much of the feedback that was emailed to me privately was that there are a decent number of developers out there who recognize that they can do better, but don't know how to do anything about it.

As an autodidactic learner, I probably take the ability to teach myself things for granted - but I recognize that's not the case for every developer.

It can be really difficult to wrap your arms around a new programming skill when you have to learn it on your own without any outside help from an instructor or teacher, and my goal is to help share my process for acquiring new development skills independently and at my own pace.

I started the process of constantly upgrading my development skills and experience about three years ago when I began my first startup. It's something that I maintained all the way through my time at Microsoft and even today alongside my other CEO responsibilities at MarkedUp. Here's what my process of acquiring new programming skills looks like:

1. Pick something that I need to learn for work or purely because I find it interesting;

2. F

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I'm the CTO and founder of Petabridge, where I'm making distributed programming for .NET developers easy by working on Akka.NET, Phobos, and more..