Ask HN: Vacation activities to improve your skills as software engineers?
I am taking a one week break and would like to find some stuffs to work on
Or just relax. People generally don't relax enough.
Just speaking for my sphere (BE rails/elixir with some FE).
Take a course on SQL. Dig deep. Chances are good it will make your apps at work faster.
For rails, learn about middle ware. We don't use it nearly as often as it would benefit us.
For elixir, I'd study plugs more. Or create a pile of service modules and play with them.
Another option. And perhaps more fun. Munchkin apps days.
Often we get in the habit of taking our time and living with our world of distraction. Every once in a while I'll take a day and an idea and pump some techno. I build a whole micro app in that day. I try to push myself as hard as I can to make something I could launch. These days are super fun, and I feel some of the joy I had when I started coding 20+ years ago.
Even if you only use high level languages, the LPI provides insight on what's happening under the hood. It also gives important context for when you do performance analysis and program optimization. Each chapter has a bunch of exercises at the end.