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 (104)
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.
That's the problem with religions ... :-)
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 :)
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! 😁
The front end is not a front end without a back end.
Which came first?? 😶
I did.
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.
Frameworks. ;-)
Also, I probably won't ever learn one of those Mac-centric languages. Objective-C confuses me with its brackets and stars and NS-something names and I fail to see a use case for Swift that does not have half-eaten fruit on it.
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 and DevOps are actually on my current list haha, although that's also on the advice of my current manager. My own list includes:
I want to include calculus as well, but my manga book on Calculus always pulls me back in.
Oh cool! I have the book on databases from this series
Same here! Well I actually bought them all at once because...well just because :P
Oh, this is a fun question :) Interested to see what other people answer.
Native mobile development. If I want to create something people can access on their phone I'll build a PWA.
Ruby. I know a lot of people here love it but I haven't had to learn it so far so figure it'll be fine if I never bother.
I like to consider myself adept and always open to learning new areas of technology; with that said here's what I'd likely nope out on if a core part of a position i was applying for.
Outdated technologies. I don't care to learn development environments that were popular in the 90's and early 00's like Powerbuilder, SQL Windows, Foxpro, ColdFusion, etc. I do know VB6 but I don't want to be stuck only doing that.
Languages outside of the C/C++ linage (ie ones other than C++/Java/C# type languages). While there are some intellectually interesting languages out there, I prefer to stick with what has worked well for me.
A lot of CLI stuff. I did a lot of CLI back in the early DOS days. I wrote my own tools to automate a lot of this. Having to use a lot of CLI to do stuff is annoying to me and makes me want to write tools to automate it (again).
oh my, Powerbuilder. Brings back memories :D
I probably need to put on some asbestos underwear before saying this, but mobile or front-end/web development.
Oh spit, 🚨Good Question Alert 🚨!
For me it’s probably “another interpreted language” and “React”.
I'm right there with you on React. Just seems to have a way to high of a learning curve for the kind of front-end work I do, and I'd much just stick with Vue.
React doesn't have step learning curve at all, it's bassicaly just Javascript with JSX. On the other hand, Vue is much easier than React if you are coming from some kind of templating language.
I’ve noticed that learning curves aren’t equal for all people in all things. I think there’s something to be said on this subject around opportunity cost as well. In the time you learn React, what else could you learn?
Yeah, you're right about that.
But if you look at the job market, you'll see that there is a plenty of jobs related to React, so I think that, if you are looking for a job, it would be really good to know some React.
You don't need to React if you're working on the backend tho, but on frontend days of jQuery, Wordpress and PHP are long gone, and you should at least know the basics of the most trending technologies. That's where the money is :)
In the end, I guess it's all just about priorities, and your goals.
Don't be so fast to discount Wordpress (and the supporting LA/EMP stack).
Wordpress runs 32% of all websites that report tech. That is >50% of ALL content management systems in public use.
w3techs.com/technologies/overview/...
PHP as well, 78.9% of all reporting public websites.
w3techs.com/technologies/overview/...
Not going away any time soon.
For me, it’s not the learning curve so much as a style issue (old complaint I know, but still valid imo), and a issue with the trends in the greater frontend community.
Why valid?
What issue?
Can you please elaborate on these? :)
PS: I'm not trying to start a frameworks/style war here, just interested in another peoples' opinion.
I don't like JSX. I think that's a valid issue, but it's kind of tired and has been litigated to death so I don't really care to re-open it. I think given the choice of "procedural in your layout" vs "layout in your procedural", the former does a much better job of separating concerns. I like the Vue approach to single file components more as well. React (or at least the community) has kind of taken the "JS-ify everything" approach, which I don't really care for, I think HTML and CSS have their place and there's no reason to wrap or indirect them with more JS.
Regarding objections around the greater frontend community, I have issues with hype cycles, build processes, "thought leaders", and what seems to be a trend towards "blog post-driven development" but I don't really want to get into them in this forum.
I do front-end work when I have to, it's just not something I care to do much more of.
Maybe valid for you 😛You can write React without JSX tho:
github.com/Jador/react-hyperscript...
Just one more question, if you can share with what stack are you working?
I'm working with React, React Native and Vue at my job right now, and while I find React much cleaner to work with I don't have major issues with Vue, in opposite I really like how's some stuff implemented.
Active Directory
SharePoint
I’ll be happy if I never have to STIG another server or dig into micromanagement with global policy.
Nearly everything else is interesting to me, though.