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020 How Do I Keep Up With All Of The Changes In C#? · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: How do you keep up with all the changes that are happening in C Sharp?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is a question that Casmir asked on our website, and I hear it a lot.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So let's address in today's dev questions topic.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you have questions of your own, on my website, there is a link on the podcast page to ask your own question, or if you're watching this on YouTube, you can also leave a comment down below the video.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know what your questions are because I want to answer them.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you stuck wondering what do I do?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this question of how I keep up with the changes of C sharp is a really great one because it's not even just C sharp, it's changing.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have from.NET framework to.NET Core, and that's really blowing people's minds.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not it because we're also going to.NET 5 and.NET 6 and Maui's coming out.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my goodness, there's a lot of changes going on in C sharp, but then there's also packages that are changing and frameworks that are changing, and some frameworks are even going away.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of change going on.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: How do you keep up with all of that change?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I have about four different things I want to talk about in this episode.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, don't.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't keep up with all the changes.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, especially if you're a shiny object person.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when I see a shiny new thing that that's going on, for example, machine learning.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Love to get in machine learning.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Machine learning is really cool stuff, and C sharp is going hardcore into it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you thought that Python is the only uh game in town for machine learning, you got another thing coming.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Really cool stuff with with C sharp.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's some really great stuff on docs.microsoft.com.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I just did send you to the documentation site of Microsoft because it's really great for especially the newer topics.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So machine learning is really cool stuff, and I want to dive deep into it, but it's not really my area of expertise, and so I haven't yet.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's intentional.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've had to say this stuff is really cool.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do it now.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Unity.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Unity is really cool stuff.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't touched it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I've installed it, I opened it up once just to see what it looks like, but that's not what I do.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I try and learn about that, I'm taking my time away from something else.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a case of good versus better, or better versus best.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you have to look at when you're talking about learning a topic, is what's the best thing to learn?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not just is this good to learn.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if you say, hey, this is going to help me in my career, this is helping me get towards my goal, then yes, that's good to learn.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: If this is interesting and maybe it's peripherally good for your career, maybe not now.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's not the best thing for right now.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, part of that comes with knowing what's your goal.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you don't know what your goal is for learning C sharp or where you want to go, then you're not gonna necessarily get there.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So set up a goal.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Say, I want to be this, I want to be here, therefore, this is what I'm gonna learn.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That can be really helpful for understanding what's better versus best when it comes to learning.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So don't try and learn everything.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's just too much stuff out there to know everything.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, number two, and a couple of these are gonna kind of um intermingle.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So don't don't skip, okay?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say, okay, got the first one, got the second one.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna stop right here.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to learn anymore.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: All four of these kind of interact together.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So so stay with me.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Number two is RSS feeds.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Create an RSS feed or create a um a feed reader of some kind that that pulls all these different uh articles and blog posts and YouTube videos and brings them all together in one place that you can then learn from.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's really important.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Have something that kind of brings them together that you can kind of take the box and say, okay, I'm I'm done with that, I don't need that, I don't need that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: I use Feedly, okay, and I'll I'll link that down below.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: But Feedly is a great tool because what it does is it allows me to bring a lot of different blog feeds and other feeds in, and then I can go through the morning, and that's why I usually do them in my morning routine, is I go through that list, and I am really ruthless about saying I'm not gonna learn that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where I'll look at the title, I'll look at uh what it's talking about, and sometimes that's all learning I need.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like a new version of Unity is out now.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all I need to know is there's a new version now because that's that's all the depth I need to go into, or even a new version of VS Code.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Great tool.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I use it occasionally, but I'm not a hardcore VS Code user.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So knowing the new version now, I might read through the the notes just to say, okay, or the highlights of what's new, and then that's it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I've spent 30 seconds, I've elevated my understanding a little bit, but I haven't gone to depth.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: But then I'll usually come out of that with maybe two or three articles that are really things I want to learn that are relevant to what I'm doing.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that focus of where I want to be.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So these are on my path towards where I want to be.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'll pull those out, and usually what I do is I open them up in new tabs.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Chrome is great for this because, and so is the new edge, uh, because it allows you to have a bunch of tabs open as long as you have the memory for it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: But you can have these tabs open and just leave them there.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you can even bookmark a whole uh browser with all the tabs open.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: You can book the mark all the tabs at once and throw them in a folder.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do that quite a bit.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I also use a tool on Chrome where I can drag articles into read later or um to learn later or to teach and things like that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I try and organize them and kind of put them in an order.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I also use OneNote to say, okay, copy that URL, put it in OneNote, and put it in my priority list because that's gonna help me figure out when to learn this, even if it's a good thing, even if it's the best thing.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean I learn it right now.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have focused time for learning, but it's not necessarily in the morning.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I will figure out what I'm going to learn.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll put it in the list, I'll maybe prioritize it, and we'll talk about that in the next point with our list.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: But but then I will forget about it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let it go until it's time to learn.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want some good resources to get started quickly on building your list of who to look at and who to read, of course, if you're on my YouTube channel, definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel because you'll get in videos uh twice a week where there's any new stuff that you don't necessarily want to watch right away, but you want to put on your reading list if it's in your path towards your end goal.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a great start, but there's more than just me out there.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's there's two guys that create a curated list daily of some great stuff, um, great articles from a bunch of different developers, mainly focused in the.NET area, but not exclusively.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so they're not gonna be focused primarily in JavaScript or primarily in Python, be primarily in C sharp, in dot net in general, but you're gonna find some stuff on the edges, and that's fine.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the two guys, and I'll link these in the YouTube video, I'll link them down below.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in the show notes of this podcast, I'll link them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the first person is Alvin Ashcraft, has a um thing called the morning dew.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, morning dew.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just it's basically a a blog post of links, and all there'll be is an explanation of this is the title and link to it, and you link you go there.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so the other one is Chris Alcock has the morning brew.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's morning dew and morning brew.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Both of these are very similar in nature, but have slightly different sources they pull from.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them are just a list, a list of links and maybe a little explanation.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, with that, you can read through, and usually what happens is I'll read through and say, okay, that one and that one, those are the two I want to look at.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll open those new tabs.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I will check off that I've read my, you know, the morning dew for the morning brew, for example, and then I will look at those tabs, I'll put them in my list.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So great place to start because it gets you from not having any resources to pull from to having multiple really good resources.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I recommend is creating that list that you look at, that you just say, okay, maybe some of the stuff is just so I know that it exists, and then some of the stuff is for later reading, or maybe for right now reading, but probably later.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So number one, don't learn everything.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, create a feed of some kind, RSS feed or similar, that you review on a regular basis.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be daily, but just regular basis.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, keep a list.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And by keep a list, I'm talking about a priority list of these are the things I'm gonna learn in this order.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you've asked me before, Tim, how do I become a better C sharp developer?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've said a couple things to you probably.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: One is I said create a training list of things that you want to learn to get from point A to point B.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Prioritize it and then go through it point by point, where you you try it out, you watch a tutorial, you read the the blog post, whatever it is, and then you practice it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's actually point four in this list is practice.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you have your list that you're saying, okay, I'm gonna learn these things.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: The really cool thing here is people often try and just remember stuff.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Don't remember stuff, don't memorize, don't stress over trying to cram more stuff in your brain because what happens is it makes you slow down, it may it clogs you up.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be, so I grew up in the era of uh spinning hard drives that were not well optimized, and so we'd have to do what's called defragging, which is where we uh have the the hard drive reorder the bits because the bits got scattered all over for these files, it took longer to access the files, and so it it put all the bits next to each other for for each file.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's what your brain has to do the more you stick into it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you can put all this stuff on a piece of paper or in OneNote or something else, where you say, Okay, here's my training list, here's the links that I've I found out about, and then you can forget about it and just say, What's my number one thing to learn?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: You pull it off a list and you learn just that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to remember about anything else, and you learn just that one thing, and then you're done learning that one thing, you move on to the next thing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, you're not focused on remembering and memorizing what you learned.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've practiced, you have practice applications that you save where you say, I've practiced this two or three or four or five times.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: You keep those practice projects, and now you have something to refer back to when you want to use that particular technology.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: You have a shortcut to remembering that again.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So don't keep it in your brain.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Create a list, and then once you have that list, practice it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the four things to do to keep on top of changes.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: First, don't keep on top of all changes, just focus on the ones that get you to your goal.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, have an RSS feed or a similar way of tracking all the stuff that's out there or a big chunk.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Don't have to worry about everything.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if you follow just one of those lists, either Alvin's or Chris's, um, the morning dew or the morning brew, if you follow one of those, you will be doing great.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And just read all the titles and see which ones apply to you and put on your list.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So don't focus on everything, focus on what gets you your goal, create your list, your RSS feed, then keep a list of things you're gonna learn in order and keep adding to it and putting things in the right spots as you come across them on your RSS feed, and finally practice what you're learning.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Really important.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Can't stress that enough.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: The answer to most of your questions comes down to practice.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: So don't stress out, okay?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna learn everything, you're not gonna know everything.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know everything, I am definitely not on top of everything.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to make sure that you're you're hearing this.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make sure that you are not thinking that this is a a life sentence of drudgery and nothing but practice and training.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not, okay?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it's not a you work from nine to five, you turn your brain off, you never think about it again, unless you're doing this at your job.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So either you're doing this at your job, or you know, if you don't have a job yet, you're practicing for your job.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have a job, either you're doing this during 905, where you are creating a priority list and continuing to learn, or you're gonna need to do it outside of your job.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that may sound harsh and people don't want to hear that, but that's how you're gonna progress.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you're gonna grow.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you really want to get to a point where your job encourages you to learn.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's highly important for a company, for an organization to encourage and pay for learning and growth.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because otherwise, what happens is you stop.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You say, Okay, we're working on.NET Framework 4.6, and that's where we're focused, and that's what we're doing.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you never pick your head up, you never learn.NET Core because we're not doing that at work.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when you lose your job?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when that project goes away?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're saying, oh no, I've missed.NET Core 1, 2, 3,.NET 5,.NET 6, Maui, you know, all this stuff I've missed, and now it feels like it's an overwhelming amount of things to learn.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be there.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: If your job's not going to do it for you, which is a bummer, then you have to do it yourself.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: But don't stress out about it.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Don't think you have to spend eight hours a day at this.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can do this for 30 minutes a day and keep on top of things.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you keep on top of all these changes.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So things are changing.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're always gonna change.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's never gonna stop.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know sometimes you feel like I wish it would just stop, or pause, or slow down.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: When it does, guess what's gonna happen?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: The language is gonna die.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: When innovation stops, when you stop adapting and stop changing, you die.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's what the industry is about.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be tough, it can be tiring, but at the same time, it's also can be energizing.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you can embrace the idea that things are gonna change, that keeps you in a job, that keeps you getting new and better solutions and easier solutions a lot of times, then I think you'll do well.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's our discussion.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's our question.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thanks, Casmir, for asking that question.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a question about anything development related, ask it either in the comments down below the YouTube video or on my website and the podcast page.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's a link to um fill in a question for me.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to hear your thoughts.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear what you're thinking about the C Sharp changes and all the changes around C Sharp and um how fast it moves.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for watching.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening, and as always, I am Tim Corey.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did.
• 19:20
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