Happy 2023 to you!
At the beginning of every year, as developers and architects, we make decisions and plans to learn new stuff to keep growing in our careers. But let’s face it; it is getting harder to figure out what technologies to learn for different reasons, including:
- We are overwhelmed with many technologies, frameworks, languages, etc.
- It is not easy to figure out what is just a buzz and what is essential and here to stay.
- Lack of time.
In the past, I failed miserably many times to learn the skills I wanted to learn, and my hopes vanished quickly. But there are other times when I got the results I wanted. Putting too much focus on the destination (goals) and ignoring the journey to get there may provide some explanation. If you are going to encounter pain and difficulty along the way and you don’t enjoy your journey, you can be demotivated and disengaged, and your goals look unattainable.
The following are some tips that help me to keep engaged:
- Keep my learning goals simple and crystal clear by focusing on one thing to learn. And the more specific the goal, the better it is. As an example, instead of setting a goal to learn cloud technologies, you can be more specific that you want to learn Google Cloud.
- Setting a learning objective for 3 to 4 months is not too short or long. Just enough to get some results if you put in time and effort.
- It makes a big difference if I can use what I am learning in my job. It brings motivation when you can apply what you are learning. So, keep this as criteria when choosing the technology; you want to learn. For example, suppose your company is using OpenAPI to document your API design (API First). In that case, there is an opportunity for you to learn AsyncAPI and bring it to your team to document the Asynchronous APIs.
- Finding a way to make yourself accountable by, for example, learning with a colleague and sharing your progress on social networks.
- Learning with a colleague or within a group can make your journey much more enjoyable and motivate you to learn from each other.
The main takeaway when setting your goals is that you should consider seriously how you will learn to reach your goals.
But let’s get back to the question of what technologies you should consider learning this year. If you want to learn more about some significant architecture trends in 2023, I suggest this summary, where several architects discuss what they have seen in 2022 and on what they hope to see in 2023. Topics explored include:
- The benefits of architecture decision records (ADRs).
- The role of Staff Plus engineers.
- Treating platforms as a product.
- The importance of sustainability and green IT.
- The need to be deliberate with culture design.