Learning something new quickly and having to quickly use it to accomplish something with a short timeline used to make me really anxious and a little bit scared. I really like to be comfortable with what I am doing before I set to accomplish a task. If I am learning a new skill, I like to make sure I get the whole picture and understanding of the skill before I use it. So, if I was rushed to try and build something of importance using something that I had just learned before I felt I was ready caused me to doubt myself.

This last week I have been very busy learning away. While some of the technologies we are using for our project are familiar to me there are a few that I have never touched. Most of my focus has been going toward learning Flask as that is what our backend will be built with. I am very familiar with Node.js as that is what most of my school projects were built in and also C# as that is what I used in my internship. Since I have already picked up and learned two other backend languages, I have to say that picking up Flask has been fairly straight forward. It is definitely more similar to Node rather than C# which is more of an object-oriented approach. Regardless, it’s pretty amazing to me that it seems that I am finally at a stage where I am able to pick up new languages and frameworks pretty easy now that I have firm fundamentals. I had always heard that once you know one programming language or another that learning new languages and frameworks was relatively easy. I have to say that when I was first starting out that seemed crazy as I found learning Python enough of a challenge. I couldn’t imagine having to learn the intricacies of another language, but now here I am picking up Flask like its nothing. Having pretty much learned all the same principles using Node, picking up on Flask has been pretty easy so far.

Having gotten more practice in constantly learning new things and having to use them quickly I 100 percent have grown in my confidence to learn and execute quickly. I think part of that has to do with me understanding more CS fundamentals, so I have a better base knowledge to understand how new technologies fit together. This has given me more confidence to learn a new skill and use it quickly without the anxiety that used to accompany taking on such a task.

Until next time

Nathan Ramos