Go and experiment. Create and finish projects. This way, you can experiment, but get new knowledge for new areas.
One of the problems that I get as a programmer is that I get really excited about new technology. This is great if you want to research something and you can get the basics in a week. This means I start a lot of stuff. I like to experiment.
I think I'm still relatively young in my journey of discovery in the coding world. I have been programming (really programming) for roughly two years and as of this moment I think I have ventured into a lot of different parts.
Knowing a bit of frontend, a bit of backend, some AI, some cyber security among other things has given me a lot of joy.
This has been really helpful because I can explore what I like and what I do not.
But, here is the problem, with this much choice and knowing all of this tid-bits of information you get a lot of ideas for a lot of projects but I tend to not do them.
This happens because I tend to have this happen to me: "How do they do that?". "If I could implement it. Where would I start?" Almost all of this come from an inherent curiosity, to build new things.
Ok, so now that I have experimented with a bunch of different programming languages and fields of technology. I should know what my big project is going to be, right?
I still think that this has not happened to me. Every time that I venture into a part of engineering or computer science I find amazing communities with people that are amazing and everyone is really welcoming.
This is a part that I still am in awe of. The amount of people that can collaborate on gigantic projects just because they have the same interest blows my head.
And this makes it a bit more difficult to decide which projects I should invest my time in.
So feeling really confused and not sure what to do. It was a question that I had in my head for roughly six months and I wrote a bit before about it. But I finally got some great advice about how to tackle this.
So I was chatting with my ex cohost in my past internship. And I voiced my thoughts on the overwhelming amount of amazing stuff that there currently is everywhere and how it was too much. So here I voice what he told me:
Just finish stuff
It's okay to experiment, but what happens to me is that I never know if I love something for real if I do not invest enough time. I was just doing the simple things and then keep moving on in pursuit of a newer and shinier object.
So, just finishing the projects I start is a great idea. This advice has several consequences.
1. I have evidence of what I have done.
2. I can understand the field better.
3. I can see if I like or not a subject.
The last one is the most important. It solves a lot of the issues that I was having. Overall, it is great advice.