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Tony Foo wrote: I don't study much anymore, because I feel it is for naught
Learning on your own with technologies you're interested in should never be for naught. At the very least it demonstrates your ability to learn outside of a forced environment which is a skill often overlooked imho. How HR views this I haven't the slightest but anyone even mildly competent in a language/framework will recognize the ability of someone who's competent in multiple. Think of it this way: the more languages/frameworks you're comfortable (or previously experienced) with the greater chance of getting out of a job you seem to dislike 
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I have a different point of view when it comes to learning some other technology that I am not really using at work.
So, I did some training and certifications for some cloud providers. But reality is that I have never used them professionally. Now, I might as well put certifications on my resume but it holds no real value IMHO.
So, unless I get a proper road map for near future, I intend not to dive in to new technologies. May be it is just me, but I forget things entirely if I don't use them.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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From my point of view, it's something that is done to satisfy a personal demand. You want to learn, you learn, maybe it gets you a job, maybe it doesn't. From the point of view of someone looking to change jobs, you can either show work in that new area supplemented by tangential experience to help your case or do nothing. Either way unless satisfied in your current area and uninterested in others, learning new technology is beneficial 
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Thanks. I love .Net development and used to study or write my own stuff most nights of the week, up until a few years ago when I started wearing a lot of different hats. Web development got me interested in IT nearly 20 years ago, but what I did not say is that I worked 6 to 7 days a week on a reporting project since July with a deadline of January. It was a failed project that was dropped on me by the execs and I was told to be the PM and lead. It was not a lot of fun, to say the least; plus I get to do my System and DBA tasks as well. I'm currently burned out, but starting to freshen a bit and read articles again. We'll see; hopefully the passion will come back.
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You don't also play PowerShell guru for the organization, security analyst, SysAdmin, and modernization advocate?
Lucky government employee :p
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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I decide the technologies on the Microsoft side and do some system administration, but not hardware. No Powershell, I can get along without it, but do still use RoboCopy a lot.
I am not lucky being a government employee. I am slightly above average, but no where near a guru. The government employees that are lucky are the ones that don't want more at work or in life. I want more and I have ambition; so I rant from time to time because government jobs can be very depressing.
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No, but you're lucky FOR a government employee, in that you have less hats to wear than I do :p
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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There aren't enough hats going round to cover the number I try [/forced] to wear, that's the downside of being boss on the facility. There aren't even hats that cover some of the stuff I have to get involved with.
Makes for a very interesting job at times.
The best hat however is the "I am on time off for 3 weeks hat" that I get to wear for 6 months of the year. 
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Two: The Freelancer and the Job Seeker.
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The most appropriate adornment for my mazard would be a crash helmet.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Try being a freelancer. Before you even think about development, you're also doing marketing, sales, accounting, legal, payroll, office management, cleaning, catering, networks, security, op.systems, hardware + software procurement and a load more jobs beside.
Sounds like you're doing one job - development. Sure, there are different toolsets involved but the mindset is similar. Seems you have great variety at work with never a dull moment
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... as many hats as I am possessing rulers ...
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Can anyone recommend a decent JavaScript book for the total beginner?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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I don't have any book recommendations but the MDN JavaScript[^] page has excellent tutorials. It's where I learned initially. Just go down that list on the left side starting with "Javascript Guide."
modified 2-Mar-17 18:47pm.
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Awesome. Thanks!
If it's not broken, fix it until it is.
Everything makes sense in someone's mind.
Ya can't fix stupid.
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Holy sh*t, I think I've been a Microsoft code monkey for way too long. I actually read that link as "MSDN JavaScript", and then freaked out when the link took me to a mozilla page. 
On the other hand, thanks very much for posting it. I will go through the page as well. 
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Haha, I've done that as well. I started out on C/C++, went to Perl, then to C# and all its related technologies. I actually started learning web development last since now everything seems to be web-integrated. MSDN and MDN are still probably my two most-viewed domains
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Been outside of the MS ecosystem for a while now, but I read the link as MSDN as well. On the second look I realized it's Mozilla docs
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Nice link - thanks, Jon!
/ravi
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I started studying it back in the 90s, so anything I can say is a bit dated. However, "back in the day" I read the first edition of the JavaScript Bible, and it was pretty darn good. It's up to the seventh edition now, but I'd suspect it's still a quality book.
JavaScript Bible[^]
Jeremy Falcon
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Thanks for that!
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Douglass Crockford's JavaScript - The Good Parts is oft considered seminal, but the language has changed a hell of a lot since then, but it is probably a good starter anyway. Everything in ES6 is just making things in ES5 easier, and so back down the ES lineage.
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This[^] is a useful reference, if you're using javascript.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Priceless. My next product development cycle is doing our UI in JavaScript, because "it's more modern, and we can use modern tools" to create it. 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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