Start with what you know

The next time you need to learn something new, start with what you know. Then apply that to learning the new thing.

Let’s take the approach I took to learn test-driven development on Rails. At the time, TDD was still a new concept to me, but I’d written and released a handful of Rails apps, and manually tested each one through the browser. More importantly, these were real apps with real users. If something was broken, I’d hear about it fast!

But manual testing and releasing software into the wild without a safety net don’t scale, and I knew that. So I took what I had—reasonably sound software that I trusted—and applied it to what I needed to learn.

Starting small, I focused on simple, tiny tests that covered functionality that obviously worked in my applications: data entry validations, relations across different classes of objects, string manipulations. If the tests failed, I could be reasonably certain that it wasn’t the application’s fault; it was the test. And if I wasn’t so certain, double-checking my work was as simple as loading an object into the Rails console and experimenting with it.

Once I’d mastered these simple tests, I gradually moved to more complex examples that took inputs from different sources, requiring several objects to play nice together, and eventually full-stack tests interacting not just with Rails, but with front-end code, external APIs, and the rest of what’s considered a full web stack.

As an added bonus, as I mastered each layer of testing, I improved my apps’ test coverage. Again, these were real, production apps, not toys never intended for public consumption. I delivered value as I learned.

It’s not just for testing–I’m using this approach now, as I need to get more comfortable with modern front-end development after a few years focusing more on the back-end. Tools like Webpack and Tailwind CSS are new to me, but they’re just different, more efficient ways to accomplish things I already know how to do.

Technology moves quickly, but don’t discount what you already know. Look for ways to apply that knowledge to what you need to learn next, and build new skills on top of it, deliberately.

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