This is an excerpt from my post on Finding What To Learn Next which I wrote for the Simple Programmer blog.

When it comes to software development, there are so many ways you could go. Choosing what to learn next is the starting point. What you learn might help you further improve your specialization or broaden your skill set.

“We can become so paranoid of going the wrong direction, that we don’t go any direction at all.” – John Sonmez

You have Application Development, Mobile Development, Web Development, Embedded Systems Development, Test Automation, Front-End, Back-End, and Full Stack. Just to name a few! Each of these can be broken down even further. The path that you take to learning can be placed into two different tracks. The structured path or intuitive path.

Structured Path

The structured path is when you know the main goal that you’re trying to achieve, say getting a job as a mobile developer, then work backwards from there to figure out the skills you’ll need to learn.

Intuitive Path

The intuitive path is when you choose to learn whatever grabs your interest at the given time. For example, you’ve just bought a new phone and are interested in learning how to run an application you’ve built on it. So you starting learning the process.

You can choose one learning path exclusively, or use both at the same time. Either way, remember: learning the new skill is the destination and you should be flexible about how you get there.

Feel free to checkout my other articles on the site here.