Learning is the most quintessential human capability. It's what most separates us from other animals. There are other animals who are bipedal. Other animals that walk upright. Other animals that communicate with audible sounds. But the ability to learn critically and apply those lessons to make new tools and/or to advance our kind and civilization is fundamentally ours alone. We even entire fields of science devoted to how our brains ork and how we learn best (neuroscience, cognitive psychology, etc.). As a programmer, software engineer, developer, or whatever the next euphemism is that we use to describe what it is that we do, learning is a key part of the job requirement. In this week at Develop Carolina, we examine the on the job training that I continue to receive at Hyper, my host company, my strategies for learning new programming languages/technologies, and the support that I received from my mentors at Hyper.

Hyper OJT

Training is really built into the framework of working at Hyper. Everyday is a new learning experience. Every day someone is working with me to teach me something new. While there isn't a formal onboarding experience as one would have received from a larger company, the on the job training at Hyper is definitely more hands on, more intimate. All of the primary stakeholders are software engineers and they are all personally involved in your success. What's better than that!

My mentor takes the approach that it is better to learn by doing. Hyper includes workshops on their Github that allows you to understand thCe platform and that you are able to use it to build an application. They even have a free tier that allows you to experiment and discover what Hyper is all about. Most of the company specific information is located on Hyper's journal. Everything you want to know about Hyper, can be literally found on their Github.

My Learning Strategies

I am much more of a kinesthetic and visual learner so that the strategies that I use are primarily in that vein. I also took a course on Coursera called Learning How To Learn by Barbara Oakley. In it, she provided some strategies that I have implemented in my daily learning. One of them is spaced repetition. With space repetition. I use Anki to take notes and have it repeated to me. I like to work through projects so I go through courses on Youtube, Udemy, Udacity, and Eduonix. I'm currently going through the Deno course from ZeroToMastery on Udemy. Once I go through the course work, I try to do my own projects, displaying its use. Depending on the topic, I like to read books about a subject and take notes on it. Occasionally I will use an audiobook but it's not something that I do often.

Another learning technique I use is to change my environment. This is also something that I have learned from Barbara Oakley's course. Being a different environment can provide new motivation. Chunking and mnemonic devices are also something that I use to make learning more efficient. Through Develop Carolina, I've learned about the wonderful gifts of kata and koans. These are definitely things that I have added to my learning arsenal and will continue to use moving forward.

Mentor Support

My mentors at Hyper and Develop Carolina have been very open and supportive when it comes to providing knowledge and assisting me with learning new paradigms and increasing my expertise as a software craftsman. I really couldn't have asked for a better team. The people that I work with are really awesome and really care about my learning. I look forward to each day and learning something new to add to my development playbook.

Conclusion

As a software engineer, it is vitally important that we development an attitude of continuous learning. It is very much fundamental to who we are. With the frequent changes that occur in the software industry, it is quite important that we stay abreast of those challenges and embark on a journey to acquiring new skills and learning new languages/frameworks/paradigms. For most people in most industries, that knowledge acquisition comes via formal education and via on the job training. This article looked into the on-the-job training at Hyper, provided insight into my own personal learning strategies, and provided a look into the mentor support that I received at Hyper.