Have you ever signed up tp do something because you knew it was something that you should do? You are all charged and ready to go and you really don’t have to spend any effort in making the decision. You know you want to do it. Still, you don’t do it, at least not right away.
A couple weeks go by, and occasionally your internal alarm goes off, telling you that you need to stop procrastinating and get it started. Yeah, I know how that is. It’s been a couple more weeks than that and I haven’t started learning Ioke. Sure, I’ve been busy. Not so busy that I couldn’t have done anything. Just busy enough that it’s been a good enough excuse.
Well, I’ll be honest. There’s another reason why I haven’t started working on learning Ioke yet. Truth be told, Ioke scares me a little.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a very interesting language; one that I am very much wanting to learn. It’s just that it’s outside of my comfort zone. It’s foreign, and it uses strange terminology like mimic and Ground and macros. It knocks me down a few notches, tells me that I may have learned other languages, but it’s different, it won’t crack so easily.
Of course, that is optimal. I wouldn’t want to attempt to expand my horizons with a year of Python because I already know Ruby and while there would be some lessons and perspectives to learn, my time would be better spent with something further outside my comfort zone. Java would be a similar issue, already knowing C#, eye opening moments would be minimal.
The very fact that Ioke both interests and pushes me out of my comfort zone makes it the perfect candidate for me to learn. It presents a challenge which is just what I need.
Knowing this, it is just a matter now of powering through the initial learning curve and getting on with the benefits. Yeah I know, I’m getting to it. Meanwhile, are there any goals that you have set for yourself in 2009 that you have having a hard time starting? What is holding you back? Anything that is pulling you out of your comfort zone?
Tags: change is good, procrastination
You know similar think was happening to me, there seems to be an outpouring of new, interesting languages, one of them, as you note is Ioke, I also felt a bit intimidated by those terms that sound a bit scary, but you know .. I think one of the best ways to learn something is by doing, (not just reading the Ioke guide), so I read a bit of code on the Ioke distribution, I liked how methods in Mixin Enumerable are implemented, then I started looking for something to do in Ioke. This week I’ve been working on IOpt (like ruby’s optparse) to help the programs under bin/ to take options. soon I started to implement my first methods.. then I realized I needed macros (as I work I have the Ioke guide and reference at hand).. then I understood the execution model, how evaluation works, message chains.. then dmacros and syntax. I’ve to say I’m very happy with Ioke now, not that I know it all, but I’m just starting, and it feels great!.
So, I’ll recommend you to start doing something with that you want to learn, pragmatic learning is imho, the best way.
Hi Vic,
You bring up good point that actually doing is the best way to integrate new ideas into our comfort zones and toolsets.
Thanks for mentioning reading other people’s code. I completely blanked on that, which I shouldn’t have because it is an excellent way to learn to do things well. Thanks also for the encouragement, I’m sticking with it. It’s just the initial bump I need to power through.