The past couple of months have found me working diligently on work stuff, but also consistently dropping an hour a day on my current side project. It just so happens that the side project and my actual work share the same language (Python) and framework (Django). This has been nice because it’s given my brain a moment to relax with regards to learning new material, but at the same time I feel stagnate.
Django is my framework of choice. I know it inside and out, can bend it to my will, and work extremely fast in it. However I’m not blind to the fact that the popularity of the old monolithic frameworks(Rails, Django, Cake, etc) for new projects is waning. People these days are starting new projects with a service oriented architecture in mind. They’re using Node.js with Express on the backend for an API, and then Angular on the front end to create a nice single page app. I’ve done this sort of development before extensively, but I’m out of practice. So I’ve come to a fork in the road.
Over the years I’ve come to realize that I can only hold two frameworks in my mind at one time. It doesn’t matter if they are written in different languages or not (those seem to stick with me easier for some reason), but two frameworks is the max I can handle. So my choices are as follows: 1) Learn Android, 2) Get good at Node.
I’ve made one Android app before when I worked at a marketing firm. It was fun. I enjoyed not doing web stuff for once. I found Java overly verbose, but as long as you stayed within the “modern Java” lines it was fine. As for Node, I already know it but I’m just out of practice. I feel like it would be valuable to become an expert in but sometimes I feel burnt out on the web.
After a lot of deliberation, I think I’m going to move forward with Android development by making an Android app for RedemFit. It’ll give me a chance to break out of Web development for awhile and hopefully will become something I enjoy doing as much as web.