Paint the Whole Canvas

Limiting Beliefs: Questions & Statements

Here are some frequent questions I get asked by relatively new developers:

“Should I focus on front end or back end?”

“Is there any point learning Objective-C?”

“Should I learn SwiftUI or UIKit?”

Sometimes these questions come along with statements like:

“I don’t want to work with Objective-C!”

“But there aren’t any jobs for [some tech]!”

“I’m a [language/technology/framework] developer”

I can understand why less experienced developers ask these questions. I also understand some people just want to be a “[some tech] Engineer” and pursue that goal. I can empathise with the resistance to get out of your comfort zone: learning new things can be daunting.

But the start of your development career is no time to be closed off to learning new things.

Mindset is Everything

Sure, it can seem overwhelming - there is so much to potentially learn. I’d certainly encourage anyone to pick a point of focus to start with.

But focus is different to being closed off.

Contrast the above statements with:

“I’m going to learn SwiftUI first, before I get to learning UIKit,”

“I’m learning Swift now, but if I need to I’ll learn Objective-C so I can work on older code bases,”

“I’ll learn whatever I have to, to build the best products”

I’ve always had the mindset that I want to be able to build complete products and systems. That I want the ability to work up and down the technology stack: low end, high end, front end, back end. And that whatever I build would have to be competetive with other products and solutions.

In short: I want to be able to paint the whole canvas.

Principles & Secrets for Broader Development

Some thoughts:

• The first programming language you learn will be the hardest. Learning any other language after that is a lot easier.
• Curiosity is a great indicator of a good engineer. Cultivate your curiosity.
• You are allowed (and encouraged) to have tastes and preferences. Getting out of your comfort zone and trying things you don’t like will develop and refine your taste. It will expose you to ideas you might have been closed off to. In short: you will learn a lot going into the places you have resistance to.
• You can go deep in different areas at different times. You might have a period where you are going deep on a web frontend framework. Another time when you are having to optimise database queries on the back end of a system. And times when you get to build a whole new system from scratch.

Some counter-intuitive “secrets”:

• its often harder to learn and master a framework, than to learn the underlying technology that it abstracts.
• learning to read dry, technical documentation is a super power.
• learning to write clear, technical documentation is a power multiplier.
• people who make money selling you courses about the latest new thing, have a vested interest in telling you its a bad idea to learn the older things.
• you’ve got limited time, energy and attention. Find and consume high nutrition information. Eliminate the junk food - the stuff that gives the illusion of learning.
• engineering is about solving problems. If you don’t like the idea of constantly having to face problems, hands-on engineering might not be the right thing for you.

The one constant in the technology world (and in life) is change.

So you want to be adaptable - to be a moving target.

Don’t let people pigeon hole you because it suits their purposes.

Don’t squander the Beginner’s Mind. Later on in your career you might find yourself desperately searching for it... but that’s another blog post entirely.

I’ll end this with some words from Enid Bell, a sculptor and educator:

“Adaptability is an indispensable attribute of the artist. Specialization too often spells death for him...

An artist must have a variety of experience at his hand… Think of the mediums used by the great masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo who could carve, paint, design a cathedral but to mention a few of the things they did.”