How to efficiently learn and master new technologies

Recently, I have learned and practiced React, which is considered as mastering another new technology. Although the learning process is difficult and tortuous, I feel very good after mastering it. In the future, I have one more choice and my technical thinking has been broadened a lot.

Looking back on my programming career, I started learning Asp in 2001, Javascript in 2002, Asp.Net/C# in 2003, Objective-C in 2009, and jumped into the front-end pit in 2013, from Nodejs to jQuery to Angularjs to React now. I have learned a lot along the way, taking some detours and accumulating a lot of learning experience.

A positive and open mindset is most important

Learning new technologies is like exploring a new field. Generally speaking, there are two typical mentalities: one is panic and resistance, and the other is positive and open. Different mentalities will lead to different results. For example, for me, programming technology has always been my favorite, so I can always actively learn new programming technologies and master them quickly. As for English and writing, they have always been areas I don’t like and am not good at since I went to school, so even after studying for many years, there has been no obvious improvement. It was not until I started working that I gradually realized the importance of English and writing, adjusted my mentality, and faced them positively. Now I have finally improved a lot.

Another obstacle to learning new technologies comes from the skills you are already proficient in. When you finally master a technology, although this will help you avoid many detours when learning new things in the future, it may also become an obstacle.

I used to be quite proficient in several languages, and I even thought I was proficient in some of them. For example, I could skillfully complete complex BS systems under the technical conditions of the time with ASP. Although according to today's standards, it is nothing more than using VBS to add, delete, modify and query the database. At that time, the interaction was not complicated, and I could also write some simple javascript to make the experience better. At that time, I thought that if I knew ASP, I could handle all BS system development. Later, ASP.Net came out, and I felt very complicated. On the one hand, I felt that I could handle everything with ASP, so why should I learn ASP.Net? On the other hand, I felt that this was the trend of future development, and I should still learn and master it, otherwise I might not be able to keep up with the development of the times. In the end, I still had to bite the bullet and learn it. But every time I encountered difficulties and setbacks, I would have the idea of ​​giving up and going back to write ASP. I felt that if I had written it with ASP, I would have done it long ago, so why bother to learn new technologies so hard?

When I finally mastered Asp.Net one day, I realized my original shallowness and ignorance. Before, Asp was only about script programming, but with Asp.Net, I can use object-oriented thinking to design architecture, and even develop backend services in addition to web pages. This is like opening a new door for me, allowing me to look at problems from a broader perspective.

From a psychological perspective, our understanding of the outside world can be divided into three areas: comfort zone, learning zone, and panic zone. The technical field we are familiar with is the comfort zone, while new technologies are in the learning zone or panic zone. As we master new technologies, they will enter the comfort zone, but there will always be newer technologies in the learning zone or even the fear zone, waiting to be learned and mastered.

If you want to learn and master new technologies efficiently, you must have an open and positive attitude.

Learning By Doing

If it weren't for @邹欣老师's "The Art of Building", I might not be able to summarize this method of learning by doing so accurately. For learning software technology, the most effective way should be "learning by doing".

How to learn new technologies by "learning by doing" is generally divided into the following steps:

Overview

Clarify phased goals and select practical projects

Collect and organize relevant articles and open source projects for reference

Overview

As the saying goes, sharpening the knife does not delay the chopping of wood. It is necessary to do some preparation before starting to do it. When starting to learn a new technology, it is necessary to have an overall understanding of the new technology first. You need to know what it can do and what are the key knowledge points. The following steps also rely on the overall mastery and understanding of the technology.

For this job, if you have the conditions, you can buy a thin, easy-to-understand book, flip through it as a whole, and you will basically have a general understanding. But it is not recommended to buy a large book, which is generally suitable for use as a dictionary. But now new technologies are introduced too quickly, and it often takes several months to wait for the book to come out, so most of the time, you still have to go to its official website to check the relevant technical documents. Just like this time when I learned React, it was really difficult to find a suitable book, so I went directly to its official website (http://facebook.github.io/react/) and quickly browsed the articles in Getting Started, which basically gave me a general understanding. In addition, there are many related articles on the Internet now, and you can find a lot of related articles and information through search.

Clarify phased goals and select practical projects

Generally, a new technology involves a wide range of aspects. It is not realistic to master it all at the beginning, but it is much easier to make breakthroughs one by one. Therefore, I usually practice one or more projects, divided into several stages, gradually master various knowledge points, and finally learn and master the technology as a whole.

For example, when I learned some server-side languages ​​before, I would try to learn by writing a message board or blog system. This time, I learned React mainly by refactoring a chat room application that I had written with Angularjs before. Through the previous overview of React and combined with my own situation, I simply divided the practice of this project into several stages:

1. Build a basic framework with React

React applications are based on the Flux architecture, but the Flux architecture does not have a unified standard. You need to choose to use a Flux architecture implementation and build a basic framework based on it.

2. Implement basic interface components

React is a component-based programming method, so the entire application needs to be split into several basic components. This stage mainly splits the elements and interactions of the interface into several basic components.

3. Communicate with the server

A complete program cannot be separated from the interaction with the server. For a React program, the way it interacts with the server is not completely the same as that of a traditional application. In addition, the result data of communicating with the server must be integrated with the interface.

4. Release test and improvement

For finished works, publish them to yourself and others for testing, and then continue to improve them, and in the process further learn and master the technical details

Once the practice projects and goals for each stage are clearly defined, the next step is to figure out how to achieve these goals and learn through practice.

Collect and organize relevant articles and open source projects for reference

There is still a big gap between the description of each knowledge point in the book or document and the final project product. In the end, the project needs to make full use of each knowledge point and combine them reasonably to write high-quality code. However, for new technologies, it is difficult to grasp these details at the beginning. Blindly relying on past experience may result in copycats, and the final product will be neither fish nor fowl.

When you first learn to practice new technologies, it is important to imitate and learn from them, just like when a child learns to speak, they all start by imitating each other. Fortunately, through open source project hosting services such as GitHub, you can find a lot of excellent open source projects by searching.

When I was learning Asp.Net in the early years, I had a long period of secondary development experience for the open source project AspNetForums, and benefited a lot from it. With my level at that time, it was impossible to design and develop such a high-quality product, and it was even a bit difficult to understand it. However, it was through its secondary development that I not only quickly learned and mastered a lot of knowledge points and details of Asp.Net development, but also developed a lot of good coding habits. In the future, when doing other projects, I can imitate and apply many of its design implementations.

Some programmers have been writing programs for many years, but their code quality is not high. One reason is that they have read too little and rarely refer to and learn from excellent open source projects. If you have never seen what good code looks like, it is naturally difficult to write high-quality code.

Before I started to practice the React project, I also tried to find a lot of open source projects. Since React technology is relatively new, there is no project that can be directly referenced, so I can only refer to multiple projects for comparison. The following is a list of some of the projects I have studied and referenced:

emmenko/redux-react-router-async-example · GitHub A server-side interaction example

quangbuule/redux-example · GitHub An example of integrating with Immutable.js

Rebuilding HipChat with React.js An application similar to the project I am going to do, HipChat, is developed with React. It is not an open source project, but through the React Dev Tool, you can refer to and learn from many component design ideas.

When building the basic framework in the early stage, we directly borrowed the framework of the first two projects, so that the program can be run quickly. Then, when designing the basic components later, we referred more to the component design of hipchat.

Learning By Doing

When reading books and materials, each knowledge point does not seem complicated, but when you actually put it into practice, you will encounter various problems (pitfalls), and these problems can only be solved through repeated thinking, checking materials, and asking people.

Learning by doing sounds cool, but the process is always difficult and tortuous! Learning is often like this. Only by going through various trials can you truly master the knowledge and turn it into your own ability.

My experience of rebuilding the chat room with React was like my previous experience of learning other new technologies. It was full of difficulties and obstacles, and I put in a lot of effort in the past two months. But when I finally finished it, I felt a great sense of accomplishment, and felt that I had finally mastered the new technology. Although there were still some knowledge points that I had not applied, it was only a matter of time. Looking back at some of my previous programming, I had many new ideas.

Lessons Learned

Here are some lessons learned:

Biting off more than you can chew

Although new technologies are introduced very quickly nowadays, the essence of many technologies has not changed. It does not take too long to master a new technology as long as you have a "good foundation" in other technologies. However, a "good foundation" is like the internal strength of learning martial arts, which really requires more time to cultivate.

So before learning new technology, first check whether you have mastered the technology at hand. If not, you might as well learn it first. Otherwise, if you only dabble in each technology, it will be difficult to achieve anything.

The goal should not be too big, and there should be staged achievements to motivate yourself positively

People's enthusiasm for learning is cyclical. They are full of passion at the beginning, but after a period of time, the passion will fade and it is easy to give up halfway.

Therefore, when setting phased goals, it is best to set smaller and more realistic goals and get more positive feedback, so that you can go further.

For example, when writing a program, you can give priority to writing unit tests and interface parts, so that you can get clear feedback quickly, such as when you see that all unit tests have passed and you can see the interface.

Learning will not be in vain

Sometimes the new technology you have worked so hard to learn may become obsolete soon. At this time, you will inevitably think that you have learned it in vain. But in fact, learning is never in vain. I have read a sentence that I think makes a lot of sense:

Everything you learn helps build the network of neurons in your head, helps you make connections that make it easier to learn other things later, and understands one thing so you can compare and contrast it with other things. Therefore, learning is always useful, no matter what you learn.

Source: How to overcome JavaScript framework fatigue?

Just like I learned Javascript very well more than ten years ago, I thought it was useless at that time, but now it seems to be very useful :)