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People, help me out.

(first some abstract thoughts)

I am a final year undergrad yet to take steps in the world and i am trying to figure out what to do with my time, what my end goal and next steps should be.

As of now I think my end goal is "relaxation , peace and happiness of me and my loved ones", and to reach there , i need money.

My younger self chose engineering for a particular reason(that i vaguely remember) and weather it was a right or wrong/illogical decision, i guess i am stuck with it and have to use this only to reach my end goal.
Maybe i am regretting this and want to change. Maybe i am just a lazy ass who is bad in his assigned role of an engineer and is running towards glitter in other fields, whatever it is , i am not going against the decision of my past and accepting my identity as an engineer.
I believe once i am able to achieve my goal( that am still not sure about but overall is a good one from general perspective), i guess i will be satisfied

------------------------------------------------
(enough with the deep stuff)

I want to learn how to "learn" . like i am always conflicted about what to do next once the tutor leaves my hand.

for eg, let's say i goto a site abc.

1. They got 1 course each for android , web dev and ai. I choose the web dev course and give my hardworking attention to it
( At this point my choice is usually based on the fact that <A> i should not be stupid to buy all 3 course even if i have money/desire to buy all of em because riding 2 horses is only going to break my ass and <B> some pseudo stats like whichever got more opportunity, which i "like", etc(Point B is usually useless in the long run i guess) )

2. From what i have experienced, these courses usually have a particular list of topic that they cover and apply them to 1 or 2 projects. For eg, say that my web dev course taught me 20 something concepts of basic html/css/js/server and the instructor applied it to blog website

BUT WHAT IS NEXT ?

2.1.
>> Should I make more projects using only those particular list of concepts?
I usually have a ton of ideas that i want to implement now that i know how to build a blog site.
say i got a similar idea to make say url shortner. I start with full enthusiasm but in the middle way there is some new thing that i don't know and when i search the internet, i realize that there are 5 ways to implement such concept, making me wander off towards a whole list of concepts that were not covered in my original 20 concept course. This makes the choice 2. 2

2.2
>> Should I just leave everything , go to docs and start learning concepts from the scratch ??
Usually when i start a project, i soon realize that the original 20 concepts were just the tip of iceberg and there are a ton of things one should know, like how os works, how a particular component interacts with another, how the language is working, how the compiler is executing, etc .
At that point i feel like tearing all my notes away, and learning every associated thing from the scratch. No matter how much my project suffers, i want to know how the things are working from the bottom , like how the requests are being mad, how the routes are working, etc which might not even be relevent for the project.

Why i want to follow approach 2? because of the Goal from abstract thoughts. in theory, having deep knowledge is going to clear my interview thereby getting me a good job.
I will get good money, make projects faster and that will be a happily ever after story.

But in practical this approach is bringing me losses and confusion. every layer of a particular thing i uncover, turns out there is another layer below that. The learning never stops. Plus my original project remained incomplete.

What is your opinon, how do you figure out what to do next?

Comments
  • 4
    Sounds like you've been primarily taught top-down approaches, rote method and inductive reasoning. Three things will address this issue:

    1. Study other forms of reasoning (Greek, Chinese, etc philosophy)
    2. Change your perspective to a bottom-up approach, aka first principles
    https://fs.blog/2018/04/...
    3. Go abroad and immerse yourself in other cultures. Avoid the the expat, the familiar. Learn both how and why people think.

    Tl;Dr you need a diversity of opinion.

    I'll leave you with a single nugget:

    "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"
  • 2
    @SortOfTested I don’t know who you are. You seem like a genius. It seems like you know everything in every area
  • 2
    @uyouthe
    Just an olds who did a lot of reading before the eyes went bad 😉
  • 0
    I also think @SortOfTested give good advise. I value giving good advise more than knowledge. You remind me of a mentor whom I respect greatly.

    @utouthe maybe she have more experience than us and is a better learner.

    Edited : Your comment beat me to it @SortOfTested. I know better than to mention "age" and you have done it.
  • 0
    What SortOfTested recommended!

    But in addition learn how to write short questions and summaries. You will need that skill a lot.
  • 0
    @SortOfTested wow. Apologies but your (and Aristotle's)words are too deep for my naive brain to understand. But since you took the pain to understand my long difficult situation, i will ponder and try to understand you.

    About diversity , that's why i post here. I come from a highly non tech family and area, plus i find a lot of my peers acting like sheeps of a flock : going wherever their masters ask them to.
    So i believe this international community of tech industry people might give me a better perspective on how this industry works

    Other than that your blog links seems very insightful, let me check them and see if i csn find some answers there

    Thanks for being here , sortoftested :)
  • 0
    @Oktokolo i actually poured out a lot of stuff and now that i think of , should be tagged random and not question, because its a list of questions combined as one.

    But if you still need a tldr : i did a basic tech course, and feel there is still a lot to learn out of that particular tech.

    How do devs like yourself proceed after finishing a particular learning? You go on making new projects or goto docs and learn stuff that course missed?
  • 0
    @StopWastingTime
    I never had any formal training, so have no experience on continuing after that.

    But i would suggest using what you know to write code.
    Don't be afraid to write shitty code (wich is basically any code you write when you come back to it a year later regardless of skill level).

    If you stumble over things you want to know, research them.
    The good thing about coding is, that there are tons of easily available resources online.
    Wikipedia is perfect for anything math- and algorithm-related if you are a math person (sadly, i am not).
    Stackoverflow probably has all beginner questions already answered.
    Youtube has pretty good explanation videos for all skill levels.
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