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I envy you. Mostly being a programmer learning "new" things is the same as a taxi driver moving to a different city every half year and learn the new topology.

In both cases, you're not learning anything that is fundamental to human knowledge.



Well, unless you're a research scientist, nothing you ever learn is fundamental to human knowledge.

But depending on what you spend your time learning, you can improve in your craft. I think that is valuable. For some people becoming excellent craftsmen gives them purpose in life.


You can work backwards towards first principles. In my case, whenever I learn something new, I always stop to boil things down to the essentials. What does this new tool / framework actually do, what am I hoping to accomplish.

Then I try to work it as best I can into my current toolset. For me, all projects get a repo on Github, and I get the nasty infrastructure bits implemented first, like deployment workflow, before actually working on the problem.

There's an art and craft to learning new things that I find fulfilling all on its own without having to turn it into something lofty.




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