There have been many things in my career that I have tried to learn, but there have been many more that I haven't learned. Part of those is because the computing landscape changed. At school I learned the Pascal language. I got reasonably good at it but over time those skills faded. Right now there's very little need for being a proficient Pascal programmer so continuing to develop my Pascal skills would be purely for my own enjoyment. I find other computing topics more enjoyable so my Pascal skills lay dormant. Should Pascal arise from its moribund state I can revisit the decision to reinvigorate my Pascal knowledge, but for now I'm content that I've made the right call. Later in my career the Java language came to prominence. I spent many sessions learning Java until I realized that I didn't enjoy the language. It felt too cumbersome to me and the directions it took weren't ones that I cared to pursue. So after some reflection I stopped learning Java. Was this all wasted time? Hardly. During my sessions I learned more about Object Oriented Programming and how objects fit together. I learned more about recursion while trying to solve a problem for one of my projects. These skills transcend Java, so when I started learning Python I was able to transfer my knowledge on how objects worked from Java to Python. I used that knowledge to understand what Python was doing and how it was different from Java. And should the need arise I can revisit my decision to learn Java and see if it interests me again.
There have been many things in my career that I have tried to learn, but there have been many more that I haven't learned. Part of those is because the computing landscape changed. At school I learned the Pascal language. I got reasonably good at it but over time those skills faded. Right now there's very little need for being a proficient Pascal programmer so continuing to develop my Pascal skills would be purely for my own enjoyment. I find other computing topics more enjoyable so my Pascal skills lay dormant. Should Pascal arise from its moribund state I can revisit the decision to reinvigorate my Pascal knowledge, but for now I'm content that I've made the right call. Later in my career the Java language came to prominence. I spent many sessions learning Java until I realized that I didn't enjoy the language. It felt too cumbersome to me and the directions it took weren't ones that I cared to pursue. So after some reflection I stopped learning Java. Was this all wasted time? Hardly. During my sessions I learned more about Object Oriented Programming and how objects fit together. I learned more about recursion while trying to solve a problem for one of my projects. These skills transcend Java, so when I started learning Python I was able to transfer my knowledge on how objects worked from Java to Python. I used that knowledge to understand what Python was doing and how it was different from Java. And should the need arise I can revisit my decision to learn Java and see if it interests me again.