How to organize the learning process with mindmaps, spreadsheets, and .NET Core

I prefer reading books from cover to cover and taking notes quite frequently. At the same, I tend to have multiple items on my reading list. It feels frustrating to get back to an awesome book and realize I need to revision it all over again. So I decided to organize it a little bit. I think the best way to organize the learning process is to envision the end goal and have sensible timelines.

For the sake of simplicity, I use google spreadsheets as storage and XMind as a visualization tool. XMind is a great tool to visualize and brainstorm some ideas.

💡 My take on it

• Determine the list of books and materials to learn for the next sprint (e.g. quarter, half of a year)
• Set priority and categorize
• Add corresponding notes to Evernote for each book, course, etc. It is quite easy to generate an internal link in Evernote and access it from the spreadsheet directly.
• Generate mindmap and play with it so it is possible to estimate and create a plan to take further actions.
• Manage progress and perform retrospective when you feel you need it. 🔁

Books for .NET Developer

Here is the list of really good books to consider:

1. C# in Depth (4th) — 2019 — Jon Skeet
2. C# 8.0 and .NET Core 3.0 - Mark J. Price
3. Programming C# 8.0 — Build Cloud, Web, and Desktop Applications — Ian Griffiths
4. NET Core in Action — Dustin Metzgar
5. Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns — Vladimir Khorikov
6. Concurrency in C# Cookbook: Asynchronous, Parallel, and Multithreaded Programming — Stephen Cleary
7. Under the Hood of .NET Memory Management — Chris Farrell
8. Designing Data-Intensive Applications — Martin Kleppmann
9. .NET Microservices: Architecture for Containerized .NET Applications — Cesar de la Torre
10. Designing Distributed Systems — Brendan Burns
11. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# — Robert C. Martin
12. The Pragmatic Programmer, From Journeyman To Master — Andrew Hunt

Build mindmaps programmatically

I’ve created library XMindCSharp for .NET to build mindmaps that you can open with (XMind). You can work with it like this:

var book = new XMindConfiguration()
    .WithFileWriter("./output", zip: true)
    .CreateWorkBook(workbookName: "test.xmind");
var rootTopic = book.GetPrimarySheet()
    .GetRootTopic();
rootTopic.SetTitle("Scope");
rootTopic.Add(epicTopic);
//...

Also, I’ve developed simple CLI application edu-scope-to-mindmap to create mindmaps from excel spreadsheet I’ve mentioned above.

To use it, run next command from the project directory:

$ dotnet run --path ./ouput --name test.xmind --source-path input/input.xlsx

Sometimes it is hard to pick a bite that I can chew on 😆.

Summary

I’ve introduced a lightweight approach to organize your learning process. Personally, I find it useful because learning is an essential part of my craft and you better do it well 😉.

If you want to organize your learning process the way I do, please feel free to use: template.xlsx + edu-scope-to-mindmap

Originally published at https://nikiforovall.github.io.