| You can't predict how things will evolve in 50 years but, as you have suggested, there are various (often simple) ideas and concepts that are timelessly useful. So develop a personal system for storing knowledge, keep adding to it, and use it to review continuously. Here's a counterintuitive idea you won't hear often: reading on its own is futile. You'll eventually forget almost all of what you read or even learn if it's not reinforced. In fact, knowledge that isn't being actively recalled or applied can decay shockingly quickly. The only way to combat this is to have a system. A simple and fairly informal system might be Post-Its and notes in a book that you review sporadically, whenever you happen to remember to do it. A more sophisticated system might leverage spaced repetition, practice problems, and tools like e.g. Anki and Obsidian/Roam Research. As an example, let's say you didn't want to forget how to differentiate (most) functions. This might sound ridiculous from where you are now, but keep in mind this is about thinking longer term. So how would you achieve this? Well you might have some flash cards with concepts and some graphics and then some more with practice problems. How many problems would you need to do a year to recall differentiation properly? Maybe 50? Add flash cards. Now differentiation is a poor example insofar as you might never find practical utility for it across the entirety of a software engineering career and you don't necessarily even need to remember how to do it manually (e.g. just use Wolfram Alpha). It can suffice to spend 5-10 minutes a year making sure you recall the most critical ideas. Broaden out and think about what could be useful for you. Mental models, data structures/algorithms, systems design, etc. Consider what would be needed to retain that knowledge and then extend your system to make it happen. Focus on ideas that are disproportionately useful (or could be) but that you encounter infrequently (so e.g. perhaps you might include 'distributed systems consensus' and not 'git fundamentals'). For most concepts it suffices to have a good high level understanding and assume that you can deep dive and relearn the rest, should the need arise. You'll be amazed at the surface area you can cover spending even 5 hours a week doing this. It's one of the easiest ways to remain an effective and flexible thinker. |