@radekmieBy Radosław Miernik · Published on
This July, I’ll celebrate the ten-year mark of working professionally. While I consider myself rather experienced when it comes to programming or teaching at the university (less about the latter, of course), there are just way more things I simply have no clue about.
Roughly a year and a half ago, I started my gym journey. It wasn’t the first time I was “conventionally” active – I was really into calisthenics and gymnastics back in high school, then tried running and climbing during my studies. But this time, I started a completely new thing while being experienced elsewhere.
On the one hand, I kind of expected myself to be good at it from day one. On the other hand, I loved the feeling of being a complete beginner again. Here’s why.
The first two trainings felt almost wrong – I was tired as hell, and felt kind of bad about my condition. But every next time it got a little bit better. Like, visibly better – I was able to take shorter breaks, lift more weights, etc. All this almost instant gratification was exactly what I needed at that time.
You see, when I was switching companies, someone told me that I took part in over a hundred projects there. (Of course, that included very limited interactions, e.g., spending three days on a quick-and-dirty performance audit.) Sure, I was still learning something new every time – at least on the soft-skills end – but it was a model example of the law of diminishing returns.
If someone were to ask me where to look for up-to-date documentation on JavaScript, HTML, CSS, or browser APIs, I’d say that MDN is the place to go. There are many, many others, but it’s just excellent and I remember it from the top of my head. I also trust it enough that if I see something there, I don’t feel like I need to cross-check with other sources (unlike, e.g., Stack Overflow).
Now, when I wanted to check something about the exercises I was doing, I… Had no idea what was legitimate and what was not. Sure, some pages were focused solely on selling me things – I ignored these. But what should I do with five or six conflicting sources at hand?
Luckily, I had someone I could ask all the questions I had – my personal trainer. He was surprised I wasn’t afraid to ask about anything, and I asked an awful lot of questions. For me, it was great to be the one asking and not only answering!
As with every single skill, the immediate gains are only temporary. Again, the same law of diminishing returns hits hard. I think there’s at least a few years of excitement left; at least that’s how I feel and guesstimate based on others.
You could say I’m no longer a junior, but there’s still a looong way to anything resembling a senior in this area. Or I’ll never reach it, as I don’t feel like I’d need to – I only want to feel better physically; feeling better mentally is just a nice side effect. Let’s just say I came looking for copper and I found gold.
There are some (foreseeable) consequences of leaping into a different part of the internet – new types of ads. And while I use adblock on all of my devices, some still reach me. Whether it was a “promoted post” on Reddit or “people also bought” on some marketplace, it shifted from programming-related things to “fit content”. Well, I guess they pay more.
Day-to-day also got better, not only because I got fitter, but also because I got a bunch of new small talk topics. It may come as a surprise to some of you, but most people are more keen to talk about fitness than programming.
There’s still a long road ahead of me – both as a developer and as a gym goer. To some extent, I’d say that being a beginner again helped me to understand others better. Just like I think it’s great for everyone to try teaching people, trying something completely new can be as refreshing.
Enough rambling, time for some stretching.