Posted on Oct 23 • Originally published at linkedin.com Based on my own experience and interactions with many other Developers, I'm going on the record with a possibly controversial opinion:If you're a dev, especially one in the first five years of your career, you should be spending at least 10% of your on the clock time—at least 4 hours of your 40 hour work week—studying the fundamentals of programming. Put aside your assigned work for those 4 hours. Schedule them in your work calendar. Mark yourself unavailable on Slack. No matter how busy you are, protect that time.Everybody wins here. The time you spend improving your fundamental skills will pay itself off almost immediately, then yield continuing returns for the rest of your career.Why is this controversial? Because many developers would say it should be 25%.To clarify, I'm not talking about "just-in-time" learning (looking up the APIs and patterns you need to finish a task at work). I'm talking about focused, academic, non-urgent study. Books, tutorials, courses, videos. Stuff that you could survive without, maybe indefinitely. Stuff that will help you swim instead of just treading water.What are the fundamentals of programming?For the programming language(s) you specialize in:For programming in general:I'm sure I missed a few. Comments are open for additions/corrections.Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use.Good article! Some companies need to do better supporting devs. For example offering additional training, certifications, or conferences for the developers who want to expand their skill set. Companies who support their developers will do better than the companies that don't. Learning is forever. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well Confirm For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse Marcin - Aug 25 Adam Nathaniel Davis - Aug 31 Cherlock Code 🔎 - Sep 5 vincanger - Aug 22 Once suspended, Isaacdlyman will not be able to comment or publish posts until their suspension is removed. Once unsuspended, isaacdlyman will be able to comment and publish posts again. Once unpublished, all posts by isaacdlyman will become hidden and only accessible to themselves. If isaacdlyman is not suspended, they can still re-publish their posts from their dashboard. Note: Once unpublished, this post will become invisible to the public and only accessible to Isaac Lyman. They can still re-publish the post if they are not suspended. Thanks for keeping DEV Community safe. Here is what you can do to flag isaacdlyman: isaacdlyman consistently posts content that violates DEV Community's code of conduct because it is harassing, offensive or spammy. Unflagging isaacdlyman will restore default visibility to their posts. DEV Community — A constructive and inclusive social network for software developers. With you every step of your journey. Built on Forem — the open source software that powers DEV and other inclusive communities.Made with love and Ruby on Rails. DEV Community © 2016 - 2023. We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.