Never stop learning

As many people who have met me know, I love learning about new technologies. I've always liked tearing things apart and if I can, I do it myself. 

A few years ago I built and managed my own websites using hosting providers and domain registrars such as Hostgator, Bluehost and Godaddy with various levels of success and really enjoyed working with WordPress as my main content management system. I have always liked to have at least a sub-level of understanding of what is visually going on. Also, fighting the battle for better SEO was challenging and exciting at a time when Google Algorithms kept getting better and better. I went deep into Google's developer tools and worked hard to keep my content up to date and relevant just to be on top! I loved it!

I've also unfortunately spent hours, weeks and months focusing on seemingly easy tasks such as how to change service providers that crashed WAY too often (HostGator I'm talking about you) and configuring things that never seemed to work like Cloudflare's delivery network services to help those hosts cross the Pacific Ocean reach my customers quickly here in Japan. So I'm very happy about the delivery and options that companies like AWS can provide to people today within the last couple of years. They offer quick, efficient service over vast distances in any language you require. It's amazing!

During my learning process there was a lot of work to be done. It was too much for full-time worker like me to take on, so it has always remained just a hobby. It gave me a very good grip of the application layer and cloud technologies which I greatly appreciate. Today I am studying lower levels of the OSI model and getting a deeper understanding of how technology works.

I've been refreshing my knowledge of cloud and the biggest improvement I have seen over the years has been the availability and low cost (or free) new tools. I caught up with the the new updates by Wordpress just recently for free. Currently in my studies of networking I am blessed with Packet Tracer from Cisco. I'm also using Linux Operating Systems like Kali and Ubuntu simultaneously via Open-Source virtualization tools like VirtualBox right on my laptop in this coffee shop. At home, my Single Board Computers like the Raspberry Pi are insanely cheap and can be a home computer or a multimedia system. If you want to really get into it, tinker a bit and play with IoT possibilities in your home this is great.

So what is the purpose of this article? What is Jesse really trying to say here?

You should never stop learning. Today there are so many opportunities to grow your knowledge it's almost unfair. We should always try to learn about the new, remember the old and communicate with people of all levels of technology to help us better understand where we are and where we are going. The older boys may not be up to date with the newest and flashy buzzwords but they took the time to deeply understand their hardware, they were very creative and built the foundation of where we are today on less than we currently have access to. They have a lot to teach us and many enjoy it, helps them learn too!

What are your favorite tools for learning as a hobby? If you want to promote a cheap and free resource for people to learn from please leave it in the comments.

All the best!