Swizec's articles in the "learning" category
I aim to write mindblowing emails with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them.
Below are 151 articles filed under learning. Enjoy ❤️
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Reader question: Should you learn the latest hotness?
Great question. Common concern. *What if I get stuck in a technology that isn't hot??* Or worse, burn out re-learning every new thing 😱
September 22nd, 2022
The audience loved my talk but I didn't
A critical look at a conference talk that went great but felt a little off.
June 24th, 2022
Meetings – a senior engineer's secret weapon
Boo meetings, yay code, right? There comes a time in your career when coding is no longer your highest impact contribution. Might even be holding you back. 🙊
October 1st, 2021
A great engineer knows their tools
Earlier in my career when I thought I was god's gift to engineering but wasn't, I failed one of those stupid interview questions that "have nothing to do with the work". It was a great question.
September 9th, 2021
You don't need a big team to automate your work
The opposite of folks who follow every FAANG trend and over-engineer their companies to death, are the folks who *never* take advice from the big boys.
July 27th, 2021
Tips for a fulfilling tech career
When I dropped out of college to focus on freelancing back in 2012, I set 3 ground rules:
July 23rd, 2021
What I learned from Software Engineering at Google
When I first picked up Software Engineering at Google I thought it was another one of those FAANG books full of lessons that make no sense at human scale. I was surprised, lessons apply to teams as small as 5.
July 16th, 2021
Your career needs a vision
In his book, The Art of Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming says the key to a great career is vision. What does that really look like?
July 14th, 2021
Preventing RSI for programmers
I've been computering daily for 24 years, since I was 9, and managing RSI since high school. People often ask how it never gets bad. This is the article I always wish I had written.
July 9th, 2021
Do important work
Next time you finish a project, ask yourself: *"Might this work be important?"*. Add the polish.
June 19th, 2021
Can you code faster?
What slows you down most while coding? It's not lack of skill. It's not lack of ideas. It's uncertainty. Fear.
February 26th, 2021
How I use delegation to get more done
Productivity porn shows you how to pack more into your day. Productivity porn is wrong my friend. You need to remove things to grow.
October 23rd, 2020
Should you take a pay cut for equity
Would you take some % of your salary in bitcoin? The joke is that compared to pre-IPO equity, bitcoin is predictable and has a known value.
October 9th, 2020
Computer science is not software engineering
Wow, college was such a waste of time ... when did you ever invert a binary tree outside of an interview? Honestly I never inverted a binary tree in college either ☹️
October 2nd, 2020
Why senior engineers get nothing done
You start a new job and it's amazing. Code all day, clear objectives, easy guidelines, ship a bunch of features be a hero. Then something happens and suddenly you get nothing done. 🤔
September 11th, 2020
Why Understanding beats Knowledge
Understanding beats knowledge every day. To have a strong career, learn to understand, not just to know.
August 28th, 2020
Tech in 2021 according to a VC
August 14th, 2020
My favorite lessons from Pragmatic Programmer
March 28th, 2020
How my bank account went from $909 to $50,000 in 2019
January 3rd, 2020
A holiday CompSci reading list for you 🎅
December 20th, 2019
"There's a YouTube video for everything"
September 25th, 2019
Hustle, life, and Bernoulli trials
July 2nd, 2019
Coders, protect your hands; you won't like coding without em
June 24th, 2019
Build one to throw away
June 19th, 2019
The web moves fast, how do you keep up?
May 7th, 2019
What I loved about Reactathon 2019
April 1st, 2019
How Grit superchargers your career
March 22nd, 2019
This kid is amazing
January 25th, 2019
When you don't think you're good enough
January 21st, 2019
Focus on the process, not the goal
January 11th, 2019
DRY is a footgun, remember to YAGNI
January 7th, 2019
When you code, write down everything
January 4th, 2019
Some life advice I learned from computer science
November 12th, 2018
Why you aren’t drowning in recruiters, too
October 17th, 2018
It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work – a review
October 9th, 2018
The joy of being a beginner
October 3rd, 2018
How I sponsored my own genius visa
September 21st, 2018
Online workshops are MORE interactive than in-person workshops
September 5th, 2018
Answering some common questions about React + D3 2018
August 2nd, 2018
The surprising benefit of hiring interns to write your code
July 20th, 2018
What Richard Feynman taught me about joy
July 12th, 2018
What's an intermediate dev anyway?
June 21st, 2018
What I learned at MicroConf Growth 2018
May 10th, 2018
Gratitude is hard – My first week with the Five Minute Journal
April 19th, 2018
Does blogging really drive sales?
April 17th, 2018
How our engineering team got 12x faster using these 5 lessons about integrating 3rd-party services
March 15th, 2018
Working IN your career vs. ON your career
March 7th, 2018
Loops are the hardest
February 15th, 2018
Don't say yes when you're happy
January 17th, 2018
Am I thinking too small?
January 11th, 2018
How resumé-driven development shapes our industry
All that once was new is old again
October 19th, 2017
What I learned from teaching StubHub about React and Redux
October 17th, 2017
$9013 September sidehustle report – or why the React + D3v4 launch was not 6 figures or even 5
October 4th, 2017
How to think of your business logic as data
August 11th, 2017
How I reverse-engineered Hacker News
August 3rd, 2017
Initial Results of my Patreon Experiment
June 19th, 2017
What I learned from Cal Newport's Deep Work
May 26th, 2017
Do you really need immutable data?
May 24th, 2017
How I Got Boned by Taxes Two Years in a Row
May 4th, 2017
Why People Read my Weekly Emails
March 20th, 2017
This is how I connected my Canon DSLR as a webcam
March 9th, 2017
Yet another hard lesson about time
January 19th, 2017
These 19 Words are the Only Self-Help & Business Advice You Need
November 7th, 2016
Go the fuck home
October 20th, 2016
My weekend at Forefront in New York
October 11th, 2016
Some facts about US household income
September 29th, 2016
My blog is the best resource online for "60*60"
September 27th, 2016
I Got Schooled
September 2nd, 2016
After a year, my first business diary retires
August 26th, 2016
Teaching beginners
August 19th, 2016
Things I learned from doing my first workshop
June 9th, 2016
Why I switched to making products
June 3rd, 2016
Does it even make sense to move to San Francisco?
May 13th, 2016
What I learned from Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking
February 11th, 2016
What I learned from Kathy Sierra's Badass
September 18th, 2015
What I learned from Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning
August 17th, 2015
Why offices are where work goes to die
June 25th, 2015
Week 20: Making ad-hoc polymorphism less ad hoc
April 30th, 2014
Week 19: Relativity theory and time perception
April 14th, 2014
Week 18: the role of diet in periodontal disease
March 18th, 2014
Week 17: What happens when you only eat meat for a year?
March 3rd, 2014
Week 16: On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules
February 19th, 2014
Week 15: A tutorial on the expressiveness and universality of fold
February 13th, 2014
Week 14, heuristic evaluation of user interfaces
January 28th, 2014
Week 13, constructing logic circuits in mammalian cells
January 23rd, 2014
Week 11, Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers
January 7th, 2014
Week 10, The myriad virtues of Wavelet Trees
December 25th, 2013
Week 9: Life at low Reynold's number
December 16th, 2013
Week 8: What a girl who plays rugby can teach organizational leaders
December 9th, 2013
Week 6, A query on confirmation
November 25th, 2013
Week 5: Random Structures from LEGO Bricks and Analog Monte Carlo Procedures
November 18th, 2013
Week 4: Tiny insects evolve anuclear neurons
November 11th, 2013
Week 3: Of lion manes and human beards
November 3rd, 2013
Week 1: Turing's On computable numbers
October 20th, 2013
I infiltrated another Rails Girls event, #RailsGirlsMb
June 4th, 2013
Sabbatical week day 3: Raining datatypes
December 29th, 2011
Sabbatical week day 2: I fail at Octave
December 28th, 2011
Sabbatical week day 1: Toshl and Toggl datasets
December 27th, 2011
Learning me a Haskell
December 23rd, 2011
Can I please take all my classes online?
December 8th, 2011
I suck at implementing neural networks in octave
November 15th, 2011
I think I finally understand what a neural network is
November 9th, 2011
First steps with Octave and machine learning
November 4th, 2011
ml-class.org vs. real world ML class
October 11th, 2011
I suck at [formal] education or does education suck?
October 4th, 2011
Calorie counting is silly
September 20th, 2011
Mac OS X Lion and Wi-Fi
September 18th, 2011
Seems I am in love with learning
September 14th, 2011
A longboard and a school system
September 12th, 2011
KVM and the great outdoors
September 11th, 2011
The quickreading
September 10th, 2011
I learned two things today 9.9.
September 9th, 2011
I learned four things today 8.9.
September 8th, 2011
I learned two things today 5.8.
September 5th, 2011
I learned two things today 4.8.
September 4th, 2011
I learned two things today 3.9.
September 3rd, 2011
I learned two things today 31.8.
August 31st, 2011
I learned two things today 30.8.
August 30th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.8.
August 29th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.8.
August 28th, 2011
I learned two things today 27.8.
August 27th, 2011
I learned two things today 25.8.
August 25th, 2011
I learned a couple of things these days 22.8. 23.8. 24.8.
August 24th, 2011
I learned two things today 21.8.
August 21st, 2011
I learned two things today 20.8.
August 20th, 2011
I learned two things today 19.8.
August 19th, 2011
I learned two things today 18.8.
August 18th, 2011
I learned two things today 16.8.
August 17th, 2011
I learned two things today 17.8.
August 17th, 2011
I learned two things today 16.8.
August 16th, 2011
I learned two things today 14.8.
August 14th, 2011
I learned two things today 12.8.
August 12th, 2011
I learned two things today 10.8.
August 11th, 2011
I learned two things today 11.8.
August 11th, 2011
I learned two things today 9.8.
August 9th, 2011
I learned two things today 8.8.
August 8th, 2011
I learned two things today 6.8.
August 7th, 2011
I learned two things today 7.8.
August 7th, 2011
I learned two things today 5.8.
August 6th, 2011
I learned two things today 2.8.
August 2nd, 2011
I learned two things today 1.8.
August 1st, 2011
I learned two things today 31.7
July 31st, 2011
I learned two things today 30.7.
July 30th, 2011
I learned two things today 29.7.
July 29th, 2011
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"