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BECOME A BETTER PROGRAMMER

Stay Up-To-Date and Ahead in Web Development

Strategies and tools

Jana Bergant
Code Like A Girl
Published in
7 min readMay 12, 2020

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Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

New technologies are emerging every year, what you learn now is old in a year or two. Without a passion for coding and for learning, you’ll soon or later be stressed and unemployable.

As a freelance developer, I move around teams and projects and need to be up to date. I cannot sleep. Being a single parent and having the chronic autoimmune disease does not help.

In the last few years, I doubled my rate, I have (almost) passive income on the side, I can choose projects that interest me and teams I want to work with.

How was I able to do it? Well, I use a couple of strategies. I’ll be sharing my tips in my articles.

What we’ll talk about in this article:

  • being a generalist vs being a specialist vs being a polymath
  • from analysis to intuition
  • tools & strategies I use to research technology

You can also watch a video version of this article:

https://youtu.be/ckFUJvfNkL0

Being a Generalist vs Being a Specialist vs Being a Polymath

Generalist is a jack of all trades. He/she is familiar with current technology trends. Generalists are rare…and, therefore, precious.

The specialist has a deep knowledge of a specific area. Too many believe that specializing in something simply means not knowing about other things. A specialist means you have expert knowledge of a specific subject. Chatbots are one of my specialties.

Polymath is someone who becomes competent in at least three diverse domains and integrates them into a top skillset. Meaning you can be a great developer, and also be great in biology, writing, dancing, art, whatever your heart desires. If you become an expert in two or three fields you are a polymath.

Many polymaths, including Charles Darwin, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Richard Feynman claimed not to have exceptional natural intelligence.

What they have is endless hunger to improve their skills. Their brain is wired to…

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Published in Code Like A Girl

Welcome to Code Like A Girl, a space that celebrates redefining society's perceptions of women in technology. Share your story with us!

Written by Jana Bergant

A full-stack developer, teacher & writer

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