When people want to get better, they usually go looking for a course.
A tutorial, a book, a new thing to consume.
And that is fine.
But you are probably walking past your best teacher every single day.
The code already around you.
The codebase you work in.
The pull requests your teammates open.
The way the senior engineer structured that module you keep touching.
There is a whole education sitting right there, and most people never open it on purpose.
So try this.
Pick one part of your codebase that someone more experienced wrote, and actually read it.
Not to change it.
Just to understand it.
Ask yourself why they did it this way.
Why is that split into two functions instead of one?
Why did they name it that?
What were they protecting against that you would not have thought of?
You will not always know the answer, and that is the point.
Each question is a door.
When you cannot figure out why, ask the person who wrote it.
Most people are quietly delighted to explain their reasoning.
You are not bothering them.
You are showing them you care about the craft.
And read the code reviews too.
When a teammate leaves a comment on someone else's work, that comment is a free lesson.
Someone is telling you, in real time, what good looks like on your actual project.
The tutorials teach you a generic version of the skill.
The code around you teaches you the specific version your team actually values.
Both matter.
But one is free, relevant, and sitting right in front of you.
So stop treating learning as something that only happens in a separate tab.
The best classroom you have is the work itself.
Read it like it has something to teach you.
It does.
– Asael Shinder
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