Make Your September Matter

Published September 4, 2020

This is it. We’re in September.

Summer is fading away behind us, time is flying by and a new year is already starting now.

Yes, I consider September to be a beginning of the year. It’s the new academic year, the new ecclesiastical year, the new Jewish year, and I guess the new year in other systems too. It’s no coincidence that September is the month of the Day of the Programmer (well, perhaps it is a coincidence).

September is the beginning of a new period after the summer break. September is where we make projects for the chunk of time between now and the next summer break. September is where you can give a direction to your year. September matters.

And September is now.

If you don’t take anything else away from this article, then at least take this away with you: now is the time to decide how to make this year matter.

Do you have a plan to make this year matter?

Set yourself up for continuous learning on Fluent C++

In this section, I’ll present you the resources available on Fluent C++ to set you up for continuous learning this year. In the next sections, I’ll share other ideas to put in place for this year, and in the comment section feel free to share your ideas to make this year matter in a C++ way.

According to the popular Pragmatic Programmer book, continuous learning is the most efficient approach to get better at programming. To achieve continuous learning, you need to select one or several sources of programming information that you can learn from regularly, and that allows you to go deep in a topic.

On Fluent C++ I propose a special option for efficient continuous learning: monthly mini-ebooks.

Each mini-ebook contains a selection of several articles on the same theme. Here are some examples of themes:

the CRTP,
the design of the STL,
core features of the language,
modern pointers and references,
design and pitfalls of ranges in C++,
STL maps,
templates,
and many others.

So each month, a new mini-ebook comes out with several Fluent C++ articles on one specific theme. Each article tackles the theme under a different angle. Approaching a topic under different angles is a way to go deep in this topic.

The articles can have been written years apart, and it takes me tons of work and thinking (and love) to put the ebooks together, and optimise their learning contents.

This way, each month you have the resources to go deep in a specific topic related to high-quality code in C++. Imagine how much you’ll have learnt after 10 or 12 months, by the next summer break!

Dozens of C++ programmers already benefit from this source of continuous learning every month. To know what it looks like, here is one of the mini-ebooks, focusing on STL algorithms on predicates.

Interested in getting those mini-ebooks every month too? This is what you get as a Fluent C++ Patron.

Normally, the tier to receive the ebooks is the $9 tier. But since it is the beginning of the year and I want you to have an awesome programming year and to benefit from those ebooks and the continuous learning in C++ they provide, I have opened a special temporary tier at $5.

There is a limited number of Patrons for this tier, and it will close soon.

Take this opportunity to invest in your continuous learning, and support Fluent C++ at the same time!

Subscribe to a magazine

Another way to make sure you learn every month is to take the habit to read (or subscribe when applicable) to a high-quality programming magazine. Some magazine are free and some are paid.

My two favourite programming magazines are:

Human Readable Magazine: a new high-quality programming magazine, spanning across many languages,
The ACCU Overload magazine.

Plan to go to a virtual conference

Attending a conference does not really qualify as continuous learning, as conferences consists of intense learning condensed in a couple of days. But planning to attend a conference is relevant to your September activities.

There is something special this year: the covid crisis has transformed the landscape of programming conferences.

When the pandemics broke out in Spring, virtually all conferences were cancelled. But now, conferences organizers are adapting to the new sanitary conditions imposing that people stay physically away from each other, by going virtual. For example, CppCon, the largest event in the C++ community, will be entirely virtual this year.

And so was C++ on Sea in June, as well as NDC TechTown a few days ago.

Conferences going virtual are a game changer. For example, if you’re in Europe and you want to attend CppCon, it used to be complicated. You had to somehow convince your employer to pay for a ticket to Colorado and 5 nights in a super fancy hotel. Provided you managed to do it, you also had to spend some 10 hours in planes plus a couple hours of waiting in airports. And swallow up a 8 hour jet lag, then just when you had adjusted to the US time, swallow up another minus 8 hours jet lag on the return flight.

It was definitely worth it. But it was complicated.

Now the trip is free, instantaneous and relaxing: just sit at your computer and connect to the virtual conference. You (or your company) only have to pay for the conference ticket, which is a tiny fraction of the total expense for a physical conference.

Now, in September, is the right time to decide which conferences you will attend this year, and to present this unique opportunity to your manager. No one knows what the world of conferences (and the world itself, for that matter) will look like next year.

Create a learning routine with your team

To ingurgitate all the learning contents you’ve decided to take on this year, you will need to dedicate time to it.

The best way to make sure you get this time is to plan it ahead. And a great frequency for learning is to learn every day.

I know two very efficient ways to learn every day: the Dailies, and Good Morning Learning. Decide now which one of those two, or any other learning routine, you’ll put in place this year.

Good Morning Learning

Good Morning Learning is a technique invented by Philippe Bourgau to use social emulation to stimulate learning. It works this way: set up a 30 minutes daily remote meeting with your team, or with any group of 3-4 colleagues.

After connecting to the meeting, everyone breaks out and spends 20 minutes learning something. It can be watching a video, reading a book, reading an ebook, reading a blog, or anything else that will provide you with learning contents.

Then during 10 minutes, everyone tells in turn to the rest of the group what they have learned during the first 20 minutes. With more than 4 people this part becomes a bit stretch, which is the occasion to break up the group, thus creating new groups and including more people.

A good way to retain the information you learn in the Good Morning Learning is to take notes. Other than a classic document to write notes, you can use the technique of the Today I Learned (such as this one) or Learning in Public.

We’ve been doing the Good Morning Learning with my colleague for a couple of weeks, and I’m impressed with how much we’ve learnt.

There are several reasons this technique works so well. First, meeting with others is a strong encouragement to start your learning on time every day. And knowing you’ll share something at the end of the meeting forces you to understand well and to retain what you’re learning. And you also benefit from listening to what others have learned.

If you start a Good Morning Learning session in your team, be sure to invite someone else to show them what it’s like. If they like it, they can set it up in their team, and invite someone else too, and so on.

Note down what you’re learning in a dedicated place (wiki, Evernote, or wherever your write things down) so that you can keep it with you after the meeting or share them with others. Indeed, since you’re going to learn so much so often, noting it down is a precious help to avoid losing all that learning!

The Dailies

The Dailies consist in 10 to 15 minutes presentations given in a team’s office space every day, on a given theme. For example, if you animate the Daily C++ in a team, you will go to their office space every day at the same time, and deliver a 10 to 15 minute presentation on a specific C++ topic.

Presenters typically use the whiteboard as a support, and visit another team every month to deliver Dailies on their topic.

Short presentations like those keep attention up, and the fact that the Dailies come to your office ensure that you get your daily dose of learning delivered to you with a minimal waste of time.

Before the lockdowns we had Dailies session in the office, and we’ll soon start to experiment remote Dailies.

Make your September matter, make this year matter

Now is the time to decide what you’ll do this year to get better as a C++ programmer. Instead of randomly reading books or watching videos during the year, have a learning plan.

Reading a magazine, following a regular blog and reading the Fluent C++ monthly ebooks are valid plans for your continuous learning. Be sure to have regular time slots for learning, for example with the Dailies or Good Morning Learning. Attending a virtual conference can also be a good opportunity this year.

Share in a comment your own learning plan for the year!

September is at your door. Whatever you choose to do, don’t let it go away, and your learning of the year along with it.