Learn to Learn

Is it actually important that you learn real things? Of course it is. But real things, especially in software engineering, tend to change hyper-regularly. The knowledge you obtained yesterday may not be relevant tomorrow. So it becomes increasingly important to learn the process of learning rather than actual information itself. The process of learning is what remains constant over time and can therefore be applied ubiquitously to new technologies.

Take JavaScript for example. Nowadays, simply knowing a programming language will only get you marginally towards solving complex problems. You need tooling around a language. Tooling exists at various forms of abstraction, like simple AJAX libraries to full blown MVC frameworks and GUI builders. Paradoxically, browser-base JavaScript still suffers from widespread immaturity. Our tools change frequently, so we’re constantly relearning different approaches to familiar problems.

That’s where learning to learn is more important. We need to learn how to efficiently use Ember.js more so than we need to learn Ember itself. Ember will quickly be replaced by yet another tool, so reducing the time to becoming productive should be the focus of our efforts. Due to the rapidly changing landscape, we only get a superficial understanding of the tools we use, but this is likely a positive trade off as it means we can more easily pivot.

Aside: Without getting too meta, I’m curious just how abstract this can become. Can you mine the process of learning to learn? What can be extrapolated?