Keeping Up with the Technology 3

[Terpsfan]

I started out in the programming field about 3.5 years ago. I'm finding it very difficult to keep up with all of the technology. It seems like I fight to keep my head above water. I started out doing Microsoft Office type stuff with Excel and Access, then gravitated towards exclusively Access. This is after having no education or background at all in computers. Then there was ASP, SQL Server...different versions of Office/Access/SQL Server. Lately it's been .NET(VB.NET/ASP.NET/C#). I basically teach myself the new technologies but finding it impossible to keep up with all the new versions of Office, Windows, Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc.

Then I say, hmmm, I need to get some certs like MCSD, MCDBA, etc.

Of course when I started I went about things the wrong way but I created stuff that worked. Now I am creating applications in a more object-oriented fasion, which takes a lot more planning and expertise.

Sometimes I feel I am stupid, other times I feel overwhelmed, other times it just feels like there is a lot out there to know. I find myself having a hard time developing a focused plan for learning all this. I tend to go from one technology to the next, or one book from the next, without becoming a master of any.

From a learning standpoint I am not sure if it is better to be an expert at least one thing or a jack of all trades.

I'm just wondering if there are other like-minded people who become overwhelmed with the wave of technology.

 

[Chopstik]

Omega36,

"Professional" can be interpreted in many ways, not just in the manner of whether you are good enough in a field to know all of the answers beforehand. In my point of view, a "professional" is the person who is good enough to recognise s/he does not have all of the answers locked in their brain but is professional enough to be able to find them or determine an answer through study and research. If I were to accept your interpretation, then I would also feel compelled to withdraw from Tek-Tips as I am certainly not "professional" enough to be a professional in this field. Instead, I work to continue to learn and improve my own knowledge while recognising that this environment is a give-and-take environment for those who are willing to do so in a "professional" manner.

Do not be so hard on yourself or you run the risk of losing out.

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"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
--Dou

 

[Terpsfan]

I think I have gotten pissed off because I can't seem to figure out how to do things in the most efficient manner or it takes me way too long. Someone who is really good in the field would figure it out in 30 minutes and move on to the next, NOT spend all day spinning wheels.

 

[Chopstik]

Would you care to make a wager on that? I frequently go around my office looking like this -

Not that I am any genius (by any stretch of the imagination), but most techies I know have periods where they are spinning their wheels. I simply look at it this way - there is almost ALWAYS going to be someone who knows how to do something better than I do. But I can likely reciprocate in other areas. I do not pretend to know all or be the best, just recognise that I can only do what I can and the rest is, well, the rest...

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"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
--Dou

 

[Terpsfan]

Unfortunately there isn't anyone where I work that I can bounce ideas off of, except for one person that works in a different location. I'm not afraid to admit he knows a lot more about programming than I do. I have recently joined a Visual Basic/Access Users Group in an attempt to interact with others who may know more than I do.

 

[bbarr]

I've taken a few grad classes in comp sci, primarily in alogorithms / design logic. Plan to take more and may even end up with a degree.

Although my work experience is mostly vba with Access and Excel, and in school we use c++, I feel that the theory has helped me to become a better programmer. I plan on taking a couple of classes this summer, one on database systems and the other on operating systems. although they are platform independent, I believe they will give me a good foundating so that if I need to use Oracle or MySQL or SQL Server on a Unix/Linux or Windows platform, I will be able to learn it more quickly than if I just learned the particular tool.

 

[Terpsfan]

That's a great idea. I have thought about taking some classes at the university's computer science dept. I originally majored in Journalism of all things. One thing you will get with a class at a university as opposed to a tech school is a more theoretical approach to solving problems. I suffered from the same problem as you did, coming from a VB/VBA background when I intially wrote applications. You aren't exposed to many object oriented techniques in that environment and to really create advanced, scalable applications, one must learn and apply OOP. Taking a class on C++ may on the surface seem irrelevant to VB/VBA, but you can apply those programming techniques to just about any language.