> Are there any quick wins that 30 ~ 60 minutes of intense concentration can generate?
Well, the _most_ valuable ones were probably taught to you in kindergarten, eg tying ones shoes, writing your name, etc. ;)
I feel like in my profession (AI/Devops/SRE), a lot of knowledge is high risk (you never end up using it) high reward (if you do need it, it's super valuable). Look at those 'things every programmer should know about X' pdfs. They're like 100 pages long and full of obscure stuff programmers don't actually need to know. Similarly, the LDAP for Rocket Scientists book most folks don't need to know, until you're trying to debug and authentication issue, adding a new schema, or trying to speed the system up.
If there is anything truly simple yet valuable, it's probably pretty basic, like 'know your IDE, know your VCS'. And probably kinda meta -- learning about learning. Random ideas:
- An hour running through chapter 10 of the git book can help users understand what git is actually doing
- an hour running through a debugger tutorial on your IDE of
choice can make up for a lifetime of printfs
- learn a note taking system like Stanford Notetaking system
I suspect what people really want from this question is more "whats the most valuable thing people haven't yet learned in an hour?" Which kinda depends on the person, no? But I do plenty of interviews, and here's a small idea set:
1. Learn statistics. Virtually nobody knows anything about them. Even AI engineers can't discuss the central limit theorem. I'm still re-learning this stuff but it seems dang useful for discussing how to tune alerts.
2. Learn spreadsheets. With the advent of google docs and shared storage, spreadsheets you make are basically for life. That dramatically changes the cost benefit analysis of planning documents. Learning how to build and reuse them can help in a variety of contexts.
3. Use git for settings and configs, even personal and minor stuff. I have my homedir in git, and that forms a framework for
studying settings. Learn a new timesaving vim setting, add it to git and it's mine for life. Add a new shell alias, and it's available on every system I use regularly -- I have a Chef cookbook for setting up my user that includes checking this repo out.
Well, the _most_ valuable ones were probably taught to you in kindergarten, eg tying ones shoes, writing your name, etc. ;)
I feel like in my profession (AI/Devops/SRE), a lot of knowledge is high risk (you never end up using it) high reward (if you do need it, it's super valuable). Look at those 'things every programmer should know about X' pdfs. They're like 100 pages long and full of obscure stuff programmers don't actually need to know. Similarly, the LDAP for Rocket Scientists book most folks don't need to know, until you're trying to debug and authentication issue, adding a new schema, or trying to speed the system up.
If there is anything truly simple yet valuable, it's probably pretty basic, like 'know your IDE, know your VCS'. And probably kinda meta -- learning about learning. Random ideas:
- An hour running through chapter 10 of the git book can help users understand what git is actually doing
- an hour running through a debugger tutorial on your IDE of choice can make up for a lifetime of printfs
- learn a note taking system like Stanford Notetaking system
I suspect what people really want from this question is more "whats the most valuable thing people haven't yet learned in an hour?" Which kinda depends on the person, no? But I do plenty of interviews, and here's a small idea set:
1. Learn statistics. Virtually nobody knows anything about them. Even AI engineers can't discuss the central limit theorem. I'm still re-learning this stuff but it seems dang useful for discussing how to tune alerts.
2. Learn spreadsheets. With the advent of google docs and shared storage, spreadsheets you make are basically for life. That dramatically changes the cost benefit analysis of planning documents. Learning how to build and reuse them can help in a variety of contexts.
3. Use git for settings and configs, even personal and minor stuff. I have my homedir in git, and that forms a framework for studying settings. Learn a new timesaving vim setting, add it to git and it's mine for life. Add a new shell alias, and it's available on every system I use regularly -- I have a Chef cookbook for setting up my user that includes checking this repo out.