This year I am going to learn something entirely different: knitting. With yarn and needles. Like a little old lady.
For the past 2 decades I have made a goal of learning a new programming language each year. I've learned languages like Elixir, Gleam, D, Ruby, C#, Dart, PHP, Java, Groovy, Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C, and Perl.
I never used most of them. Learning new languages is not a waste of time even if they go unused. Seeing how other people think and design code is extremely valuable. I truly enjoyed diving into functional programming with Elixir and Gleam. I see ideas from that paradigm appearing my TypeScript all the time now. However, for the near term I have simply hit a point where there is too much diminishing return in learning a new language.
This year I am going to learn to knit because my brain is a mess. The feeds and the algorithms and the AI autocomplete and the constant news cycle are all running rampant. I can hardly focus. Productivity is hard, getting into flow state is hard. Finishing this post without watching something on YouTube or checking the news is hard. That's enough.
I am going to spend time disconnecting and doing something boring with my hands so that I can start to reclaim my mind. Thankfully my daughters are all kitting and crocheting experts so I don't have to go crawling right back to YouTube to learn it. I'll get to spend more time with them and they'll get to practice teaching their hard won skills to me.
My hope is that by spending this year finding ways to reclaim my ability to focus I will become a better developer and a better person.
Here is my work so far. Looks kind of like my code: full of holes and knots. I'll post updates here as I make progress!
Top comments (2)
Great choice! I also believe we hit a point of diminishing returns by learning new programming languages. Taking care of your mental health is way better than learning a new programming language. Good luck!
Good for you! Here's how I handled it - Do Not Learn Another Programming Language 😁