Every so often, it helps to take a step back and evaluate your process. No matter how finely tuned your process is, there’s always potential for improvement. This week I took a look at a couple of courses on Pluralsight that focus on how developers can stay at the top of their game. The courses were How to Stay Abreast in the Ever-changing World of Tech and Keeping Up with Technology. Both of these courses are worth watching and offer actionable advice on how to improve one’s skill set. The ideas intersected quite a bit. The advice on staying away from the bleeding edge in Keeping Up with Technology. It’s so easy to get caught up in the shiny new thing. Another key takeaway is the dedication to fundamentals and soft skills, both of which never go out of style.

I’ve made some good progress on my readable project this week. It’s not done yet, but it is getting close. The biggest tasks left are to add commenting features, refine the posting functionality, and clean up the UI but I feel like a lot of the heavy lifting is done. My understanding of Redux is growing every day and I’m really getting comfortable with the development workflow.

Finished

Pluralsight Course(s): How to Stay Abreast in the Ever-changing World of Tech, Keeping Up with Technology

Currents

Course(s): React Nanodegree

Pluralsight Course(s): Implementing and Securing an API with ASP.NET Core, Securing ASP.NET Core with OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, Redux Saga

Book(s): Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, Tao of Seneca

On the Next…

I’m going to keep moving forward on the Pluralsight courses I’ve been working through. I will finish at least one course this coming week. My guess is that the course that’s completed will be Redux Saga, which is a deep look at how to build a React application that heavily relies on Redux Saga. Sagas look like something that will be useful in all future development projects. Here’s the link to Redux Saga’s github page. It’s a very popular and active project.