Mar 26, 2018 | General
When we talk about learning technology, the focus is almost always on core skills – keeping up with technology, or becoming competent in a core new technology stack. I talk a lot about this in my various Pluralsight courses like “Learning Technology in the Information Age” and “Keeping up with Technology“.
I also talk about “Just in time” learning – learning things as you need them, but mostly that’s also in the context of core technologies – things you NEED to know to do your job.
But what about things you just want to learn – that are hard to justify?
Now I have a confession. I love creating things. I’d be an artist, except – that I don’t have any particular talent there. And of all of the art I’ve dreamt of creating, nothing is more exciting to me than animation. I’ve tinkered with it. If you’ve watched my courses you’ve seen some of my experiments – mostly PowerPoint animations, and my “So You Want to be a Billionaire” video from “So you Want to be an Entrepreneur“. I’ve experimented with various easy to use programs, but in the back of my mind I’ve always know that what I really needed to learn was Adobe After Effects.
After Effects is the gold standard for the kind of effect animation I wanted to do. But the learning curve intimidated me – how could I justify the time?
But this year I found my excuse. Authors of Professional development courses on Pluralsight are challenged to use video, animation and other approaches in their courses. So in developing my upcoming course on “Building Trust and Commitment on Teams” (coming soon), I decided to bite the bullet and learn After Effects.
But to make it work, I had to learn as efficiently as possible – remember, this is an edge skill for me – it’s not like I’m going to build a business on animation, or even turn it into a major hobby.
Fortunately, I’m not just a Pluralsight author – I’m a user as well. So my first thought was “What might Pluralsight have on the topic”. I ended up starting with Jeff Sengstack’s “After Effects CC Fundamentals“. It covered pretty much everything I saw myself wanting to do, at least starting out, and while I certainly didn’t absorb everything in the course, it left me feeling confident that I could actually accomplish something. I was no longer intimidated by the program. Next I took on Jeff Hurd’s “After Effects CC – Creating Your First Animation“. I took that one slowly, following along with all of the examples. I finished that course feeling ready to tackle some real work. From then on, it was learning “on the job”, and while I made some mistakes, overall I was pretty happy with the results, and look forward to my next challenges.
I use Pluralsight in various ways in my own work, but this really brought home the value – that I could leverage my access to the library to learn the edge skills – skills that I may only use once, or for which I can’t justify a major investment in time or money. Skills that I might pick up just for fun.
If you have a Pluralsight subscription (or even if you pick up a free trial), I encourage you to do the same – take some time to find something that you don’t need to learn, that may have no practical value whatsoever. You never know, you might create something you never expected.
For those interested in getting a free trial on Pluralsight, you can find more information here or from any course.
Jun 10, 2017 | General
If your first thought on seeing that question is to think of the techniques you use to keep up – books, courses, videos, experimentation and so on, then you’re probably doing it wrong – or at least, could do it better.
Find out why in my new Pluralsight course “Keeping up with Technology“.
Jun 2, 2016 | General, Technology
Will your software outlast the original developers? Almost certainly yes. But will you be able to maintain it?
That’s one thing about being in the software development business as long as I have – you gain a very healthy respect for the value of maintenance. Sure, the studies all show that maintenance costs 50%-80% of the total life-cycle cost of software, but there’s nothing like living through the entire life-cycle of multiple software projects to really understand that.
You spend a lot of time thinking about what you might have done earlier on to make life easier now.
Which is why my latest Pluralsight course, Building Software That Lasts – A Guide to Maintainable Software, is perhaps the most important course I’ve published. If not the most important, it’s certainly the one with the greatest potential to have a real impact on the cost of software.
This is not a theoretical course full of recommendations that sound great, but never put into practice. This course was born from pain – and the sure knowledge that in many cases, especially in today’s fast paced development world, maintenance and maintainability is the last thing on anyone’s mind, or in anyone’s budget. So while yes, I do discuss best practices, I spend a lot of time focused on processes and practices that are simple and cheap – and that might actually get done even when budgets are tight and speed is of the essence.
So I invite you to check it out and tell your friends. Even if you just pick up a few ideas, they’ll be worth it – that’s the thing about maintenance: a small investment now can save you a fortune in time and effort later on.
May 16, 2015 | General, Software Development, Technology
What technologies will you be working on a decade from now? Will you even be working in tech? Do you even think that far ahead?
Most of us don’t. There’s this assumption that because technology changes so quickly, long range career planning in technology is futile. So our careers are driven by the opportunities of the moment and happenstance, rather than by any real long term thought.
But it turns out that long term career planning is possible, even as the pace of technology change increases. Not only is it possible, it’s a crucial part of any technology career, for all that it is neglected.
My new Pluralsight course, “The Future of Technology Careers” can help you to start applying long range planning to your career – to think about the future in new ways.
And if that doesn’t convince you to watch it, allow me to point out that it is the only Pluralsight course to seriously address the potential consequences of a Zombie apocalypse on software development. How can anyone say no to that? Remember – you can sign up for a free trial on their web site, so what are you waiting for?
Apr 26, 2014 | General, Software Development, Technology
I’m pleased to announce my latest Pluralsight course “Data Visualization for Developers”. In this course I cover the fundamentals of data visualization that every developer should know. The course goes beyond the basics of charting to cover data visualization architectures – an essential element on today’s world where data, analytics and rendering can be distributed across multiple servers and cloud services.
Check it out at pluralsight.com
Mar 29, 2014 | General, Technology
Part of being in the software development business is that sometimes you have to support software for a long time. Longer even, than Microsoft does. So the fact that XP is about to become an unsupported unsecured target of every virus and botnet in the wild doesn’t change the fact that I need to keep it around as part of an old build system.
But, that doesn’t mean I need to keep it around as real hardware. So, it’s time to say farewell to that old Sony Vaio – one of the finest and quietest old Pentium machines I’ve owned. Its soul has been removed – virtualized – leaving behind an empty hulk of hardware with, get this, the last of the old tube monitors.
Its spirit will live on, joining a virtual community of old Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Windows NT build systems. Waiting in limbo for the possibility they’ll be called into action again to support a customer running some ancient legacy software.