Is it wrong to fall in love with a dot com? I suppose that depends on the dot com.

I mentioned casually in the last Round-up how I was looking at a course on Lynda.com. This week I decided to prove my devotion by splurging on a paid membership.

There is an old quote that I’m paraphrasing here that goes something to the effect of:

“The more you learn, the more you find there is – to learn” – Unknown

I’ll go off and do a proper search for the attribution later.

I have always had an insatiable appetite to learn as much as I can, particularly about my job. When you come to be known at a smaller firm as something of a technical expert at something, an unfortunate by-product is that you are expected to be an expert – at everything.

Coupled with a noisy environment that makes it impossible to think – let alone learn new skills – I have to ratchet up my knowledge on my own time. This is a fundamental concept I read about recently in a book (that I’ll link to, also later) on the programmer’s life. The theory is that one should not be learning anything at a job site; one should be producing and carving out a schedule for learning on your own time.

Yesterday I made a major breakthrough in a dynamically generated list for a form driven by a database – (a back-end task, not my strength) while getting clarity about CSS page layout (the front-end, where I “live”). Both thanks to my membership. My Life will be simpler.

I can’t recommend Lynda.com more highly. I wish I had pulled the trigger sooner.

Best,
Tim
P.S. I know this sounds sponsored. Trust me, it is not. Is there a course on that?