I get it. You want to keep up with the latest tech. You want to be the first to learn that new that’ll take your engineering prowess to the next level. You compulsively checked Show HN and /r/ for the latest and greatest tech. tool Programming It’s becoming a bit much — or it will eventually. . You need work. Compelling work. Interesting work. You need to create some_thing_ that’s so exciting that the brings you back to the keyboard, not the technology stack. You don’t need more knowledge thing A new JS framework isn’t going to make you a better programmer and reading an implementation of a todo list in that framework isn’t going to either. Suggestions Instead of building another CRUD UI using the latest framework, focus on building a “solution” that you’ve never built before. Lots of front end devs have never implemented user authentication or a permissioning system. Instead of yet another framework, find an API that you’ve never used before and build something fun using it. The or APIs are great places to start, for a little more fun check out . Slack Twilio Microsoft’s Cognitive Services Already a rip roarin’ awesomesauce full stack dev? Build a side project with the express goal of making money. This is the fastest way to learn how unimportant the latest framework is. Pick a and build side projects with just that. Focus on iterating through projects until you find something that captures your long term interest. Boring Stack Feel free to learn the ropes. Programming is a magical experience — I’m coming up on 10 years and it still is, every day. But, if you’ve got the kind of experience that sees you diving into the internals of React, Angular, Ember, Vue, Preact… The thing standing between you and becoming a better software developer isn’t your lack of exposure to frameworks. It may not even be programming. Part of software development is the business of software which has many complex, nuanced, as-deeply-experiential-as-programming moving parts outside of the engineering team. Depth getting to you? Invest in breadth for a while. I’m Wesley Walser, the founder & CEO of . You can follow me on or . Ask Inline — We help teams build great customer feedback campaigns Twitter right here on Medium
