Next Steps
— thinking out loud — 3 min read
"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else." –Lawrence J. Peter
Hi,
I am Aman, and this safe space is where I am most raw with my thoughts, hop on if you'd like to interact with them :))
Thinking out loud
For a long time I have been thinking about what it means to be a good developer and attracting smart people towards me and I think I am finally ready to give my raw thought processes a shape.
My current set of powers include frontend engineering with React but when I think about engineering in general, it excites me to my core. I think a part of the reason is because I have always admired engineers growing up.
People building cool things have always appealed to me, it makes me want to copy them and build similar cool things.
When I think about programming/coding I think of myself as someone who enables people to interact with the digital world, sounds very grandeur and so is my ambition.
Having realised this, I have decided that frontend is not the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life, I absolutely love solving problem statements which are interesting to me,
am not a "JavaScript Developer".
as an engineer the ability to build tools for myself that aid me in my day to day life feels like magic.
Coming back to engineering, though React is the tool I interact with most while building stuff, I am often times also excited by various other engineering spectrums,
I definitely want to build compilers on rust just to satisfy my curiosity of understanding how javascript gets converted to a machine level abstraction.
When I think about databases and http protocols it makes me curious as to how this fundamental layer of the web is shifting with technologies like blockchain.
My curiosity to understand engineering is my attempt towards understanding the world around me in a much better way.
As someone who has spend considerable time on the internet, I definitely want to see myself in a position that allows me to architect it.
Why Engineering
Having graduated from an engineering background has made me realise that engineering is the only thing that juices my intellectual curiosity and I choose to see the world around me from an engineering perspective.
Maybe it is because of my 11th grade physics teacher Anirban sir, his curiosity first approach while teaching physics enabled a part of me which I never knew existed,
If I try to trace it back on a longer time horizon, I think I can come up with some other factors that have had a major impact in making me curious about engineering:
The social network
Flash
Arrow
[Cartoons]: Justice League
Tools
I use a lot of tools in my daily life, and I have started taking effort to make myself good with certain set of tools, because to me tools are nothing but super powers in my arsenal and when I think about it this way,
It allows me to expand my thinking to areas which I otherwise would not have thought of.
Next step
Building things gives me a kick and I have decided that this year shall not be any different, so
drum rolls please 🥁 🥁
[1] : I have decided to dive deep into open source codebases around tools that aids me in my daily life and simplify it just to satisfy my curiosity of understanding the world around me in a more better way.
Some tools that are currently of interest to me are:
- Drawing Apps(Excalidraw, tldraw, Figma, Canva)
- Social Graphs and mind mapping tools
- Interactive Video Interfaces (Scrimba)
I will be diving deep into open source alternatives of these codebases with my roommate.
Really inspired by Arpit
[2] : I will still continue to work on my iteration of a better video interface this year, just to solve my personal problem of sharing narratives in a much better and simple way.
[3] : I have thought about this quote a lot and I think I resonate with it on a very good level,
The key thing is to force yourself through the work, force the skills to come; that's the hardest phase. - So Good They Can't Ignore You
I am taking an active effort this month to learn few things that will make a better frontend engineer in general and a better programmer overall
These are some of the resources that I am currently going through
[4] : I think I will try to learn rust, just because I find it cool, no other reason
Conclusion
That's it folks,
I'd rather have a big ambition and risk failing badly than committing to smaller things
also if you like to know what my content consumption looks like on a daily basis, here you go:
Open source Content Consumption
Jan was a good start to this year but it's time to buckle up the ride is going to get a lot bumpier
I will make sure I am in alignment with my goals as much as possible
also if any of you awesome folks want to help me understand engineering better feel free to reach out to me @ email or twitter, let's build the next cool thing together ;)
