Ask HN: How to get a general tech background?

4 points by ls66 11y ago ↗ HN

I have been in the IT industry for years as a non-technical, BA, PM and now manager. While I understand things at a really general level, I still struggle with basic technical knowledge gaps. What would be the best way to approach self-directed learning for overall IT development, from infrastructure/networking through basic programming languages and approaches through web technologies. Just something to have a comprehensive, if not super deep, understanding of the whole picture. Is it better to start from the foundations of infrastructure or move from understanding applications (object-oriented design, java..etc) and then onto how things work together?

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bitshepherd 11y ago ↗

If you want to get your feet wet, spin up a virtual machine with something you want to get to know, and do stuff with it. Build things manually and learn how they all fit together, then try to repeat the process with automation. Through that, you can build a development environment that you know in and out, which you can then build upon using whatever technology/framework/language you decide on using.