How to get out of fixed mindset of learning from the ground up as a self taught dev

Question

I am a self taught dev, and I keep getting this horrible imposter syndrome that I must know the fundamentals of operating systems, networking, or computer architecture even though it has nothing to do with my job. It almost seems that I am the type of person that needs school even though I failed out of it. How can I learn to cope with not needing to know everything? It seems like I want to learn everything but honestly it's not necessary.

Charlie Vuong · Accepted Answer

There's probably been one time every year where something related to operating systems or computer architecture comes into play, but honestly, you can just search for it and find an answer quickly. Unless you are very interested in those subjects, it's probably not worth it for you to dedicate hundreds of hours to go through a textbook to learn those fundamentals.

As you get to each problem, you can figure out the solution for that problem at that time. Over the course of a year, you'll have gained so much knowledge and experience. The mental block may be that you feel like you need to know the answer to everything up front, which is not the case. People are constantly learning. The harder the problem, the less likely there is a clear answer, which makes the problem fun because you get to obsess over it :).

How to get out of fixed mindset of learning from the ground up as a self taught dev

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