Re: At what rate are YOU progressing?

[chromatic]

I started to get it when I'd learned enough programming languages that the essential concepts all came together. That is, when I had enough information that I could step back and look at the big picture, seeing the similarities and differences.

Reading the Ruby book was *very* enlightening, because I'd come across a Ruby feature and see how that would work in Perl... sometimes I could even see how to implement it.

For me, what works is a combination of natural curiousity, some talent, and a willingness to play with things until they make sense. There's probably also a part of my brain that sees patterns wherever I look.

I was reviewing a book about Unix system administration and came across a chapter on UUCP. It's not as widely used these days, but just reading about how it was implemented gave me ideas on how to do something completely different. Reading some documentation on Apache functions available to modules gave me other ideas.

The important thing is being able to look at your problem in a new way, and to be able to learn from lots of different places.

If you have *some* knowledge and experience, and the will to do something about it, all you have to do is capture those creative flashes when everything turns sideways in your brain and you Get It, for just one moment. That's all.