I've been writing a lot recently about how people don't need to know everything, and how it's impossible to know everything. It's something I 100% stand by, and there are so many things that I don't know a lot about. So I wanted to do something different and open up the discussion about things that we aren't interested in learning.
I'll start:
VIM - I know people absolutely love VIM, but I'm super happy with my text editor set up, and don't really feel a need to overcome the VIM learning curve. Part of me does sometimes think about it, but at least for now, I'm good.
DevOps - Fun fact, my title for the first year or so of my software engineering career was "DevOps engineer" -- I didn't really do DevOps, but I can sort of navigate my way around setting up a server, and I have set up a Kubernetes cluster. That being said, the output isn't that tangible to me, and it's not something I'm super interested in diving too much deeper into that world.
Advanced math - I took Calculus in high school, and took a couple of stats classes in college, but that's really the end of my math education. I'm not super interested in diving too much further into that world, and, to be honest, I forget a lot of the stuff I have learned in the past.
Lower level programming - the more tedious process in order to build useful things in lower level languages doesn't really interest me.
Hardware - I'm not super into hardware, I like my pre-built Mac's and the world of building computers just doesn't draw me in.
There are a milion and one things I would love to learn, but I can't learn everything.
What tools or technologies are you not interested in learning?
Oldest comments (98)
aw! I'm sad you don't want VIM in your life :) I find it quite useful in my case.
As a student in comp engineering, saying I don't want to learn math is impossible. There is much math, but I am glad I went from total dumbo to pretty decent.
For me, I don't want to learn anything about blockchain. To me, it's just a buzzword whose trend will fade eventually.
The modern frontend toolchain is where I'm tapping out on the "full-stack" idea. I can do everything I need to do with server-rendered templating languages; if I'm working on something that requires getting serious about understanding React or Vue or Webpack, I'm going to be working with someone who knows React or Vue or Webpack. I can work out what's going on in there well enough to fix problems and add minor features, but I'm profoundly disinterested in digging deeper.
Same here. It feels like a waste of time learning anything as before a year has passed almost everything is irrelevant again. It is just to too much effort to keep track of everything that's going on there, besides keep track of everything in the back end.
I used to consider myself a full stack developer. But with the modern front end stack I think everyone who claims they are full stack are liers.
I've done the whole frontend toolchain thing. Webpack manually, webpack with code generators, vue, this tool, that tool. I hope I'll stay away for a while :D
I seriously like Babel though. It started as a way to use modern javascript in lacking browsers but it's becoming more and more a way to experiment with features before they are standardized
I suggest digging deeper, you never know when a job comes along that if you can do that you'll get it because you can do it and others can't. Not all systems are new systems, the backbone of most of the internet is running on stuff from before most of us were born.
Being able to maintain and rework legacy systems is pretty lucrative and generally a requirement as your career progresses, trust me.
I am disinterested in the back end. I understand the principles and programming patterns, but I get nothing out of working in the back end. The front end is where it's at! 😁
You might be interested in playing around with serverless functions. Takes a lot of the headache around backend development, and lets you just focus on the stuff like DBs that you can't do only on the front-end.
Which came first?? 😶
CSS. Which is sad, because it's ubiquitous. I've scratched the surface, but I'm both bad at and uninterested in creating pretty layouts and designs, I'm more interested in the machinery. I'd be happy with a motherfuckingwebsite.com/ world but alas.
This shocks me, but moreso I respect you for writing since I know there's likely MANY other devs here who'd say the same :P
Takes all kinds, right? I'm rather glad there's people on both sides of this one around.
Android development.
Everything always seemed so confusing to me and having to write Java doesn't make it much more appealing. I did hear about alternative ways to develop for Android with Dart, Flutter, Kotlin and whatnot, but I'm still not so keen on figuring how those work.
Although I feel like I can't just completely ignore Android as there are just so many users, but boy will I hate the learning process
I think you should take another look at Android dev because there's been tons of improvements. Kotlin is a really solid language and I don't think I could ever go back to Java after having used Kotlin.
Also the Android team launched Android Architecture Components (ViewModel, LiveData, Room), Material Design 2 etc. which have made development immensely easy. I used to find iOS much easier to develop for but now they're both almost equal.
Machine Learning. I see it thrown around everywhere as the new thing to do, and I just can't build up the energy to dig into the complexities (both with the science behind it and the massive amount of different libraries available).
iOS app development, never had real interest in it.
Vim is clearly superior, let met demonstrate you !!!
I should use the /s more often. I sincerely don't give a damn about what people use :)