Lifelong Learning As A Developer

“if you’re not enjoying learning new things about your job, what are you doing working that job in the first place?” – Bruno Skvorc / Can 9-to-5 Developers Be Good Developers?

I’ve had many conversations with one of my co-workers about the topic of what makes a good developer, and one of the keys we always come to is the drive to learn and understand. I do agree with a lot of what Bruno mentions in his article. While it is extremely important to figure out a good balance for everything in our lives (work, family, hobbies, etc), I can easily see the difference between the developers that have a passion for what they do versus the 9-to-5 developer. Don’t get me wrong, there are excellent developers that fall more into the 9-to-5 model, but I think they are more of a rarity then a commonality.

I had a unique High School experience where I happened to get involved with starting a charter school (MNCS) in my hometown of Le Sueur, MN and did more than just get my High School diploma. During my years there I learned about, well, learning. From the start one of the visions of the school was to teach lifelong learning. School days were filled with opportunities to learn to engage with, and contribute to, the world around us. I guess this is probably one of the things that engages me in the WordPress community. This is something I think that is pretty unique about the WordPress community, I don’t see the majority of people involved as just the 9-to-5’ers.

I don’t consider myself an expert in any areas of development, but then I think there are many that if they consider themselves an expert their growth may be stunted and their ego may be a bit inflated. That is no place I ever want to be. I think the day I declare any sort of expert status is probably the day I’ll be unable to learn as well as I used to.