Imagine a skilled craftsman meticulously building a wooden chair. The finished chair, sturdy and polished, is the output. But if nobody finds the chair comfortable, the intended outcome, a satisfying seating experience, is not achieved.

This simple example from carpentry resonates deeply with the complex world of software engineering. Have you ever heard of o Software Engineer who does not like to be named Craftsman? The nuance between outcome and output is not philosophical and has profound practical implications. As software engineers, focusing on both aspects can lead to projects that are not only technically sound but also aligned with user needs and business goals.

When I started my career as a software engineer, I didn’t have any map or list of skills that are necessary to succeed. I’ve spent too much time on unimportant stuff, a far too little on crucial things. If you know at least something about software development - you can create web service in Django, or build microservice in Spring, crate some machine learning model, or write Spark Job - and you want to advance your career to the next level, this blog post might be helpful for you.

Before we start, I have good and bad news.
The good news is that at some point you will have to unlearn what you have learned. If you learn something, you are becoming blind to other things that you can learn. Remember, you are a creative person; your mind should be free and open for new waters. Do not be afraid to forget stuff.

The bad news is that you will probably never stop learning.
Over time, some things became similar, and we use similar design patterns in different contexts. Even that something is similar, it is not an excuse to stop learning. You need thousands of hours of practice and writing software to be good at it. Besides spending many years writing software, I know that I have deficiencies in some areas that I want to improve.

According to The National Library of Poland research, only 10% of Poles read at least 7 books per year. I know that we are not reading a lot, and it was no surprise for me. Conversely, this fact motivated me to investigate to do some health-check about my reading.

The challenge

At the beginning of 2019, I thought that I read approximately about 10 books a year, but I wasn’t sure. My regular peace is one book a month, but I didn’t measure it in any way. I’ve decided to change it.