- Find ways to ask questions. Whether forums or slack channels or peers. Asking puts you in the learners seat.
— Find domains that excite you. A friend told me “web development rots your brain” after he tried that for a while and found that carving out some time to contribute to open source Linux drivers kept him going and engaged.
- There’s an adage: Make it Work. Make it Right. Make it Fast (or optimal). I’ve observed that most programmers have a tendency to stop after the first priority is met. It’s understandable, that’s the lowest investment with the biggest (short term) return. But it’s also where the least learning happens. Push yourself to make one of your solutions a “right” solution. Push yourself to optimize something about it (even if you don’t deploy the actual optimization, because there be lots of evil around optimization).