Shiny Objects.

Lately, I've been in the mood to learn about some new technologies. For the past few months, year I've been fairly head down in the J2EE world learning/using J2EE technologies like EJBs, JMS, Spring, etc... Now I'd like to use some time to branch out and look at some none J2EE technologies.

I find that it's important spend some time outside of your comfort zone every once in a while. Like all technologies the J2EE world expects you to modify your thinking to fit within a certain framework. The more time you spend working within that framework the harder it becomes to think in a different way. One way to keep your mind nimble is to, every once in a while, try something new.

However, learning a new technology with out the pressure of deadlines or the structure of a project to work within is an incredibly frustrating process. When you are learning a technology in order to accomplish a goal, it's very easy to stay focused. You figure out very quickly what's important and what isn't. When your goal is to learn a technology it's very hard to stay focused. To keep from being distracted by every shiny object that you wander across.

Some people blithely suggest, why don't you simply formulate a project and use that project as a learning tool. Formulating a project is difficult. You have to find something that is simultaneously interesting, unimportant, and straight forward. These attributes seem to me to be inherently contradictory.

So the question arises, what is the best way to learn a technology?

Undirected Reading aka Web Surfing.

When things get slow at work I, like most people, surf the web. While some may look view this as a waste of time, I'm more inclined to view it is an important professional development activity.

First, rather than referring to it as web surfing let's call it undirected reading. If you think about it, most of the things we read in life fall into two general categories: stuff we need to read for work, stuff we want to read for fun. However, surfing the web really doesn't fall into either of those categories. Rather, surfing the web is process of discovering what we want to read for fun and what we should read for work.

I'd say, without any statistical basis, that ninety-nine percent of what I read when I surfing the web is neither fun nor useful. Mostly, it's just junk. However, the act of filtering through this great mass of junk does help me clarify my thinking in some hard to define way. It helps me figure out what I'm really interested in.

My First post.

I've tried blogging several times and I've never been able to stick with it. Let's see if this time is any different.

It customary, as customary as anything on the web is, to start your blog with a statement of intent. To layout why you are blogging, what you intend to blog about and who you'd like to read the blog. So here goes:

1. I'm blogging because I'm hopeful it will help me sort through the barrage of ideas that I'm exposed to every day. I hope it'll help me clarify my thinking and it'll give me a outlet to improve my writing.

2. I intend to blog primary about technology, the books I read, and the daily challenges of my life.

3. Primary, I'd like my friends, colleagues and peers to read this blog.

This attempt at blogging will be a bit more ambitious than my previous attempts. This time I'm actually creating two blogs: a general interest blog(karthikthinks.blogspot.com) and a technical blog (karthikcodes.blogsport.com.)

Check out Karthik Codes to learn more about that blog.