KillerSites Blog

How to Learn Technical Skills Faster

July 25, 2017

The following is an excerpt from the best-selling The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide by John Sonmez.

From the chapter: How to Learn Technical Skills Faster

Now that I’ve given you a nice long list of technical skills to develop, you might be wondering how you are going to develop all of those skills and how long it is going to take you.

Well, as for the length of time—don’t worry—you’ll be developing your technical skills as long as you are a software developer. Think of it as a journey, not a destination.

You will always be able to get better—if you choose to.

I’ve spent plenty of time developing my technical skills the wrong way.

However, in my three years of creating over 50 highly-technical developer training courses on Pluralsight, I’ve also learned how to develop technical skills at a lightning fast speed while teaching others at the same time.

I used to think the best way to learn a technical skill was to take a big reference book and read it cover-to-cover.

Back then, I read too many 800+ page books to count and didn’t benefit much from the exercise; although my arms might have grown from carrying around books of that size.

I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did, and if you already have, I want to show you a better way.

Learning How to Learn Quickly

Before we get into the specifics about learning technical skills, I think it’s worth taking a second to talk about learning anything quickly and teaching yourself in general.

We’ll go much more in-depth about the topic of teaching yourself in an upcoming chapter in this section, but I want to go over the basics here and talk about a methodology I use to learn anything quickly.

As I mentioned, I spent a large amount of time both learning and teaching various technologies.

I learned whole programming languages in a matter of weeks and then turned around and taught courses on them.

During that process, I developed a reliable system for learning just about anything I needed to learn.

This wasn’t so much a conscious effort as it was a necessity. I was trying to learn at such a rapid rate that I had to come up with efficient ways of doing things, and naturally, patterns of learning developed which helped me to become faster and faster.

I’m just going to cover the basics here, since you can find a whole course I put together on the subject at 10 Steps to Learn or in a few chapters in my Soft Skills book.

Buy John’s book on Amazon.

About the Author

read more

StudioWeb’s new course: Powerful Python 3

March 14, 2017

My new beginners Python programming course, ‘Powerful Python 3’ will be released in spring 2017.

Check out the first promotional video:

You can learn about about the course at StudioWeb.

Stefan Mischook

read more

My book tweeted at me

August 13, 2016

Hi,

Some of you know, that I wrote a book last year. Sales are actually increasing. I like it when someone tweets a photo of my book:

You can pick it up on Amazon.

Thanks,

Stefan

read more

3 Ways to Learn Web Design

August 1, 2016

Three ways to learn web design:

1. Buy my 5 star rated book on amazon.
2. Get my interactive video course on web design … and it covers much more!
3. Do this websites’ tutorial: Start Learning Basic HTML Concepts »

If you have questions, feel free to contact me.

Stefan

read more

The future of IT industry.

July 20, 2016

Hi!

I got this question today:

Stefan, could you make a video about the future of IT industry? Many people say, that programmers are gonna disappear pretty soon as artificial intelligence will be able to solve programming tasks. What is your opinion?

My answer:

AI has problems with figuring out context in a sentence – so I wouldn’t worry too much. That said, in time it will happen, and when it does (10-20yrs?) … there will be super advanced robotics as well, and super advanced renewable energy.

A massive change in society altogether

So that would suggest to me (if we keep the politicians in check) a society where resources are nearly unlimited. They’re will be no need to work, as there will be plenty for all. I know it sounds crazy, but we’ve already seen a huge upheaval in society with the industrial revolution, where the whole human context was changed dramatically. It will happen again when AI, renewable energy and robotics hit the tipping point.

… So don’t worry about AI taking your coding jobs. When AI can code, the whole world will change for the better.

Stef

read more

Surface Pro 4 is great, but it can also suck.

February 8, 2016

Hi,

So I bought the Surface Pro 4 shortly after it came out, something I rarely do, because it’s dangerous to buy new tech products when they first come out.  So after a couple of months of use, I can tell you that Surface Pro 4 is both very cool and annoying.

The good:

• Microsoft got the perfect blend of full computer and tablet. Amazing!
• The pen is great – I take a lot of notes by hand. Love it!
• Great screen and the kick-stand is HUGE!

The bad:

• Whatever you do, don’t put it in sleep mode – many times, it doesn’t wake up and you have to restart. And that’s a pain because the Surface Pro gives you no indicator as to what’s going on.
• The Surface Doc (that cost $250) doesn’t work half the time. It has troubles driving USB devices and even the monitor.
• Some general minor flakiness: sometimes the touchscreen doesn’t work (you have to restart,) sometimes the pen doesn’t work … you have to restart.
• Mouse pointer and UI element size issues: sometimes the mouse pointer looks like one of those giant foam hands you see at a football game. Other times, app buttons are so tiny, you need to buy a magnifying glass to see them. I’ve confirmed these issues weren’t the fault of the apps, because in other Windows 10 machines, this problem does not exist. It is Surface Pro 4.

So overall, it is a great computer that is in late beta. Please fix this otherwise great product Microsoft.

Stefan Mischook
Killersites.com

read more