I'm beginning to feel that itch again to immerse myself in something completely new (yet tangential to what I've already been doing). I'm a full-time software engineer, but I feel that it might be time to broaden beyond a specialization in web. So I'm going to try to pick up C++ and hopefully get a task at work that can exercise what I'm learning.
Having these feelings really puts me in a bind when it comes to being passionate about the work I need to do right now. I've consulted with some people that I would consider my mentors and I have been told that this feeling is normal. (It's always nice to hear your internal freakouts are completely normal.) It's been 2 years and 8 months now at the same company, same team, so I think it's probably about time for a change of some sort.
Whether that change actually happens, and happens in my favor, is yet to be seen. I am targeting some infra teams, but it's tricky tranferring internally with limited domain experience. It reminds me of all the times I used to hustle to learn something new for a client or a large project in a new domain. Happiest times of my life.
What's keeping me busy in the meantime besides my work are my two side projects: learning C++ and taking some drawing classes.
I am a self-taught engineer working almost exclusively in web, and more recently (past year and a half) in web infrastructure dealing more with the servers that serve our web requests. I have picked up Javascript client- and server-side, and have become well-versed in Python. These languages are considered still fairly high-level, with a lot of the lower-level manipulations abstracted away, which is why I'm told it will be difficult, but beneficial, for me to learn C++. I've bought the book Accelerated C++ and I've gotten myself setup with the Eclipse IDE. I plan to work through a few chapters, and then try to pick up a bug or task at my work that involves practicing with a C++ codebase. I'll try to document my journey -- hopefully that will keep me motivated.
I am using my personal computer (MacBook Air mid-2013) and found myself having to clear some disk space since I have the 128GB SSD model. I have Java 7, so I quickly downloaded the Eclipse Mars IDE and set up a new project. Voila, I'm able to compile and run the examples in the first couple of chapters of this book.
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