Over the past few years I've been asked a great many things about my ability to keep up with the latest happenings in the software development world.  For example I started learning programming with Pascal in the early 90s, then I moved to Visual Basic.  There wasn't a big fuss over me not really knowing Visual Basic when I took this assignment, it was just understood that I would buy a book and the next week I'd be programming.  No, it's not like Neo in the Matrix when he first learns Kung Fu...people just don't learn that way.  But what people are good at is taking something similar and then synthesizing those concepts to another situation.  I've often heard that an "if" statement is an "if" statement no matter what the language.  Sure it may have brackets or parenthesis around the phrase, but the concept is still the same.  Therefore, if you understand the basics of a programming language, many other languages are easily within your grasp.

Fast forward to an even more ironic day, when I was working for a training company teaching web development (originally I'd been hired to teach Visual Basic) and we just went through a round of lay offs.  Management was showing a slide deck of the "new" organization when my name appeared not only by the web development instruction team but also under a team which I had real world exposure but had not dreamt of teaching.  True to the cause, I taught the course in less than two weeks.

So how'd I learn all the information?  I have to admit every day I read at least one article related to technology.  After the course of a decade these small commitments add up to thousands of articles read and a huge breadth of knowledge acquired.  But I've been able to go even farther this year.  I started listening to Podcasts of software development gurus as well as management gurus on my drive into work.  This allows me about an extra hour of learning that was normally spent on the senseless rants of Kansas City disc jockeys.

In summary, I’m offering a few methods to maximize your learning potential.  First, you just have to display the guts to learn (pick up the book).  Second, put yourself into situations where you have no choice but to learn.  And lastly, find ways to build knowledge both cumulatively, and in your down time.

Good Luck and Happy Learning!