<story><title>Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study</title><url>https://www.jotaen.net/2e2Ff/sabbatical-self-study-reflection/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>christiansakai</author><text>I am not doing any Sabbatical right now, but I am currently soul searching. I&amp;#x27;ve been working as a fullstack dev for more about 5 years. I do have CS background, and think myself as quite a decent programmer. But in my day job, or I suspect in most day jobs out there, CRUD stuff, nothing is really interesting and it is really hard to make a leap in improvement in technical skills. Though of course, you improve bit by bit everyday just by code review, bug squashing, practicing best practices, do better tests, etc. But mostly these are the mundane tasks.&lt;p&gt;While you can argue that technical skills have diminishing returns, but I do really want to focus more on it at this point of my life.&lt;p&gt;I see it in HN, Reddit, everyday people make very cool projects and I wonder what it will take for me to reach that level?&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I decided to buy the book &amp;quot;Engineering a Compiler&amp;quot; and set a goal to actually finish it. I guess that&amp;#x27;s my soul searching direction will go for now.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reflecting on 8 months of full-time self-study</title><url>https://www.jotaen.net/2e2Ff/sabbatical-self-study-reflection/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gorpomon</author><text>For those wanting something a bit less intense, the Recurse Center in NYC is a great place to practice a few months (or now even just a week) of self study with some of the brightest folks you&amp;#x27;ll ever meet.</text></comment>