Skip to main content

Healthy To Learn Something Outside Your Box

When you have a problem to solve, what is the most typical way to approach it?
Everybody is different, but most of us try to stay within our comfort zone because that’s what makes us feel more stable or more secure. We have one tool and we try to solve all the problems with that tool. When it comes to providing software solutions, you have to step a bit out of that comfort zone in order to innovate and in order to provide flexibility for someone else to innovate.
I started my career in Unix/C++ software engineering world years ago. Then I switched to a Microsoft shop at the end of 90s. I’ve been in the Microsoft world ever since, but I’ve shown a bit of interest in other technologies that are from the open-source community. In last few years I started digging deeper into Python, Node.js, and recently back in Java area. I have not been doing this because I am unhappy with what Microsoft had to offer, but I am rather doing it because I want to explore and find out how the open-source community has solved problems and what solutions/options are in the open-source world. This expanded my horizon a lot. It could mean that I will stay more in the open-source world or it could mean that I would take the concepts I learned and take them back into the Microsoft-shop and apply them in such a way to keep things simple and proper at the same time (.NET Core is now open source and that's a great move from Microsoft). Regardless, it is a win-win for me.
What are you doing to step out of your box? Try to dedicate only 1 hour per day and don’t worry about your progress. Check back in 30 days and you will see amazing results.
Thank you for reading this article. You can also check out my personal site: almirsCorner.com
Almir Mustafic



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Daylight saving time and A Software Engineering state of mind ?

You may be wondering what the Daylight saving time has to do with a software engineering state of mind. When thinking about writing this article, at first I thought to start with the following joke and I am: “ Did you know that the Daylight saving time was started because a software developer coded a function that does smart timezone and configurable calculations and then this developer created a problem to solve to use the algorithm; hence, the Daylight saving time was born. ” This is a joke, but  on a more serious note , this brings me to a state of mind in software engineering that make this joke a reality to some degree. How many times did we find ourselves in situations where we learned something new in programming and we looked for ways to apply it at any cost? How many times did we see a cool new feature from a creator of a framework and we decided to use it even though that was not the right solution for the problem or maybe there was no problem to solve in the ...

Leaders/Mentors in my life

I have been blessed in my software engineering career with great leaders. Some of them challenged me in technical skills. Some of them challenged me in my organization and leadership skills. Some of them challenged me in both. And all of them made me a better software engineer, a better senior engineer, a better solutions architect, a better teammate, and a better leader. If you are a student, find yourself a mentor. If you are a junior software engineer, find yourself a mentor. If you are an experienced software engineer, find yourself a mentor. Remember, you write your own definition of success and you are your own critic. That may mean that you TRY to perfect every stage of your career, or that may mean that you skip some stages in your career. Remember, you are in control. That’s all I wanted to say today :) Keep geeking out. Almir

OWNING your sandbox

OWNING your sandbox. As software engineers we all like to work on latest technology and coding new applications. People generally don’t like spending a lot of time maintaining the code. However, in the world of microservices the owners of each microservice are very well known and defined unlike in the world of monolithic applications. That means that you own it in the true sense. You own the code. You own the QA environment. You own the Stage environment. You own the production environment and all the errors that come along with it :) On positive note, you have a lot to be proud of and you can turn it into opportunities :) You own something that is contributing your company’s customers and what you do responsibly affects the lives of many people in a positive way. Almir Mustafic