I was a gamer

Back when I was young (I’m 28), I was a gamer. I could play for hours and get almost no sleep just to play games. Every games and only good rated games. I could complete several ones in just one week. I was at one point a really big fan of the Warcraft series (not WoW by the way) and got ranked really high on Battle.Net. But life goes on and I reduced my average playing time to the minimum (and I am a new father, so it’s really not that much). Now I only play games that fit into the kind I love and that I know will not be crappy.

I could say the same thing to the time I now spend learning new programming stuff. I’m more picky at what I choose and tend to ignore a lot of thing that I would have found interesting if I had time to read them. So I need to choose really carefully what I decide to involve myself into, and spend the less possible time on learning anything that I could find easily with some googling.. I also ignore stuff that come and go quickly (Cardspace?). I understand the inner plumbing, but the implementation details are not so important unless it’s something I really need to (example : I needed to create a secure WCF service, but It’s not something I use daily and will probably not use it again in the next year, so why should I choose to learn everything about securing a wcf services?).

But in my early years of programming I would have done it. I mean, learn all that I can and purchase new books every weeks. But the reality kick-in quickly and it’s just not possible anymore.

How do I keep up to date and not become crazy trying to learn everything ?

1. I read blog. No, I read blog title and choose only what I think will be interesting for me.

2. I read books. But only great books. Other people already done the job of finding good ones. So I am not loosing my time on less than average book.

3. I work on my own project on my own time. I find it to be great to feel involved in all the stage of creating an application. UI, architecture, design, deployment, redaction, marketing, etc…

4. Watch screencasts. Dime Casts.Net and TekPub (maybe someday, I will buy a subscription).

So the question is: what do you do to keep up to date with everything and not let yourself become a programming zombie?