The missing readme notes

Chapter 2: getting to conscious competence.

Learning to learn

• Front-load your learning: learn how everything works.

• Learn by doing: we learn little by reading and learn a lot by doing.

• Experiment with code: run experiments to learn how code truly works.

• Read: spend a portion of each week reading. You can read: team documentation, design documents, tickets backlogs, books, papers, and technical sites.

• Watch presentations: It could be: internal company talks or external Youtube videos (tutorials or conference presentations).

• Attend meetups and conferences (sparingly): These are good for networking and discovering new ideas.

• shadow and pair with experienced engineers: The shadower is an active participant: they take notes and ask questions.

• Experiment with side projects: Working on side projects will expose you to new technologies and ideas.

Asking questions

• Do your research: try to find the answer for yourself. Not only on the internet; search on docs, readmes, and bugs tracker. Try to turn your code questions into unit tests to demonstrate.

• Timebox: limit how long you research a question. Set a limit for your question before your start to search.

• Show your work: Describe to others what you did to find the answer, that will help them to find a specific answer and avoid options.

• Prefer multicast, asynchronous communication: post your question in a chat or mail group, that will avoid interrupting others.