Learning new things takes time. But we often forget that sometimes, learning is a privilege. One of the hardest parts about learning is the time commitment to get it right. Sometimes, I completely take learning new things for granted.

One of the recent CodeNewbie chats posed the question, “One thing that excites me about my first (or current :) programming job is ______.” I decided to answer that in regards to my current job, as I’ve been here for 7 years now and sit in a senior role.

My answer was, “Having the say of what new technologies we should adopt and proving them out. Scary at times, but has a large inpact.” I meant i[m]pact, but the tweet isn’t editable.

So I put that out there. And then it got feedback. And then I found myself envied because of this position, and it made me stop and think about how I didn’t notice it when it happened. Honestly, what younger me would think of this job? He would be thrilled.

I still do development, but that’s not all. Knowing when to tie in a job queue, use Redis, and even interface with (or build) an Oauth 2 API? That’s all new. That’s all this year.

Last year, I was really just a skilled PHP developer. Now, I consider myself more of a polyglot. I’ve adored Ruby for years, so I spent time learning more about it and TDD, and then I learned how to build sites using Sinatra and Rails. And while that was going on, I spent time reading up on building good APIs.

To be fair, I’ve not mastered these things yet. I’m still learning. And I’m noticing now that, what was once a rough year is finally starting to pay off.

And that’s exciting.