What is the fastest, most efficient way to get up to speed on a new technology?
- by SLC
My current job involves working with a huge number of technologies, most of which are very niche and unheard of. In some cases I have to write something about the technology, or with the technology, such as some lessons, examples, or tutorials, on behalf of the developer of that technology or someone that is backing it.
When I get told to learn about a new technology, my first port of call is to check our internal library, and then look on amazon for a book on the subject. Failing that, or if the project is too small to warrant a purchase, I hit up google and youtube. However the results of randomly googling what I want to learn are hit and miss. Some days, I can find everything I want to know in a series of lessons or videos, and it's no problem. Other times, I can find almost nothing, and I really have to piece together things from sites.
The result is that there are various resources out there, videos, interactive lessons, tutorials, books etc. but when I need to learn something fast, I often don't know the best way to go about it. It's not about fun, because I don't always have the luxury of working my way through a 600 page textbook named "A Complete Guide To Technology X", I have to deliver results quickly.
One of the examples I'd like to use is ASP.NET MVC 2 which is something I have been told to learn. I grabbed a book on MVC 1 to refresh my knowledge, but googling it does't produce much useful information. I've seen a ton of ScottGu's tutorials on it, but they are mostly feature presentations, and some date back almost a year. The same applies to channel 9 and there are no books out yet on amazon.
My question therefore has two parts, the first asks, "Where are the best places to look to get the information needed to learn a new technology?" and the second asks "What is the most efficient way to use such resources to learn a new technology?"
