Ask HN: am I making progress or losing track?

[zjj]

(Sorry for the long post)

I am a developer, used to be very well known in my old area of expertise, between my colleagues. I had my own little startup I earned my life of, that was doing well.

At some point I started feeling mediocre, and I decided I wanted to learn more technical stuff. I dropped the startup, entered a fascinating project I never stop learning at, and started focusing in learning more and more about the maths and algorithms of my field.

Since then, I dropped IM as it's distracting, stopped all business like work, and also I'm not caring much about the many new things that are appearing every days. So I could be losing track of one side of technology (new languages, frameworks, methodologies), which I don't care so much about, to focus on algorithms and maths for development in the field I'm working at.

So, am I making progress? I'm learning a lot every day, every time I have more knowledge that I can use (and I use) to do more complex projects. But, I'm not so aware of what the new technologies are, only about the fundamentals.

What's your opinion about this? I feel that fundamentals matter more than the very new technology, but sometimes I feel I could be wrong about this.

[mpf62]

I would say: keep focusing on fundamentals. Learning new technologies is pretty easy if you do understand the basic rules that they are all based on.

For example: I you have no idea what the "De Casteljau"-algorithm is about, how could you implement a adequate solution for a given problem with any technology? But if you do, there's not so much difference implementing it with Canvas/JavaScript, SVG, VML, Whatever.

Knowledge of the fundamentals makes you priceworthy. There are enough Visual Studio and other Wysiwyg-Clickers (What is NMEA? There's no button for that in my IDE ...). What is hard to find in software industry are people that really understand what they are doing.

[zjj]

I agree, thanks for your reply.

[elliottkember]

> I'm learning a lot every day

I like it. Fundamentals are always useful, new technology comes and goes. The most important thing is that you sound like you're enjoying yourself.

[zjj]

Yes, I am. Thank you very much for your reply.

[keefe]

Progress can only be measured in reference to a destination, which you don't discuss here. Is your goal to revolutionize some part of CS or some part of society or just to make enough to not have to work?

As an aside, I followed the opposite path - math and CS in undergrad and grad, jobs to explore the parts of CS I missed and now I am into practical software development. I'm not particularly interested in methodologies etc. but I find myself here for practical reasons.

[zjj]

I always wanted to be a revolutionary in tech / science (but I don't little formal studies that allow me to do that from academia, I'm rather self taught), not to be rich. I think with time and focus I could have become rich by keeping my work on the old startup I left. But I felt that I was not being true to myself by doing that, and I was not liking it enough to keep pushing it further.

Thank you for your reply.

[keefe]

Sorry if this duplicates, my machine glitched. I just wanted to comment that unless you are independently wealthy, money has to be a big concern - which means either doing something commercial or getting into academics. I would love to have a business in ANY field that would provide enough residual income to allow me time to pursue my own ideas long term.

[zjj]

I agree. I have a work that pays me well now (it was hard to do the transition between what paid me well and what I liked but didn't pay because I didn't know about... I'm now at some point in-between). I'm not starving, but I have to work full time. But I'm keeping away from business stuff, at least for a while, to learn more of the things I find worth learning.

[mfalcon]

I think you're going the right way. Learning only what you like/want to learn in order to use it in complex/interesting projects.

About the new technologies, it's impossible to know about everything.

[zjj]

Thank you very much for your reply.