by Joshua Davis (jdavis.info)
I’ve been busy these last few weeks. Though I dreamed of having lots of free time to read and relax post grad school, free time has been hampered by two things: Geoff and I decided to look for a new house, and I’m having to learn a LOT for the new job. If you want to read about the reasoning behind the house hunt, head over to my other site, OS Agnostic. Here I’m going to talk about steep learning curves and the troubles they present.
My situation is not uncommon- though I knew a lot of what was needed for my new job as Digital Resources Designer, there are a lot of things I need to learn. This is exacerbated by the fact that some of the technology we use/used was only known well by my predecessor.
Some of what I need to learn is pretty straightforward—PHP is an example. I am muddling my way through a few books on PHP, and can puzzle out a lot of stuff. I’m also getting better at XSLT and can do much fancier things with it than before.
The harder things I am learning are tough for a few reasons. One is that there’s no easy learning guide, and another is because the guides that do exist assume Unix/Linux system admin experience, which I don’t have. These technologies include Tomcat, Cocoon, Solr, and XTF. The other problem I have is we use these technologires in a somewhat simplified way, and I don’t need to know how to do everything with them. I really only need to learn to do a small subset of what the program can do, but all that information is bundled in books or websites with a lot MORE information than I need.
by Victor Gregorio
Finally, I feel that, lacking a computer science background, I am missing something vital to the understanding of these technologies. I’m not sure if this is a common feeling or not. I end up feeling lost much of the time.
The learning curve problems are multiplied by two, because the Center hired a programmer who started in January and is also learning these technologies (albeit more quickly than I am.) The person we replaced knew all these technologies, unfortunately, he was the only one who seems to know some of them well. We’re still trying to figure out how he did the work of two, since the programmer and my position are a split of what my former colleague did. I remain in awe of his prolificacy.
So, work is going well, but I can’t help but feel a little lost much of the time. It is really great when things fall into place and I understand something, but sometimes that moment seems all too elusive. And it is hard to balance the learning needed with the other things that need to be done.
“Finally, I feel that, lacking a computer science background, I am missing something vital to the understanding of these technologies.”
Trust me. You’re not.
Systems like Tomcat and Cocoon can be extremely overwhelming. A lot of us started with them when the former was a kitty and the latter was a few strands of silk. Now they’re huge, multi-layered systems, and people devote their whole lives to them. But it’s always this way. When I started, I used to get nauseated walking into the computer section of a bookstore. It still makes me anxious to see dozens of titles on technologies I’ve never even heard of (despite the fact that I spend half my life keeping track of these sorts of things).
I don’t know how to make sense of it all for you, but I will say that having a CS degree — for all its many benefits — does nothing to alleviate these jitters. After all, there are design paradigms in Cocoon that literally didn’t exist ten years ago (so even people of a certain age with *doctorates* in computer science would have to start anew). In the end, you’re better off developing a relaxed attitude toward the fact that you will *always* feel a bit stupid in this business.
Books hold out the promise of solving all of one’s problems, and in my younger days, I bought a *ton* of computer books. Nowadays, I buy a lot fewer (even though there’s just as much to learn). Instead, I tend to proceed in two phases:
1. What does this bloody thing do? Like, what *exactly* is a web application container? Why do I need Cocoon (instead of some far simpler method of doing XSLT)? What’s the relationship between Solr and Lucene? And what’s Lucene again?
2. After I get a handle on that, I then ask myself what I want to do with it right now (or what the person who’s bugging me wants to do with it). I then go out on the Web and try to figure out that specific problem.
Now, this doesn’t work for some things. You can’t learn genetic algorithms, relational database design, or linear algebra this way, for example (that’s what books are for). But you’d be surprised how far it will take you with flavor-of-the-month tool or framework — including some really complicated ones. Just think: You’ve been doing this with Linux for awhile, and amazingly, you now know a lot. It’ll be this way with the other stuff. It just takes time.
Don’t worry. You go, girl.
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