Summary of "Why I focus on patterns instead of technologies"

The video emphasizes the importance of focusing on patterns rather than specific technologies or technical details, particularly in programming but also applicable to broader systems like APIs and databases. The presenter argues that understanding underlying patterns leads to a higher level of insight ("opening your third eye") and makes learning new technologies easier because many concepts repeat across different contexts.

Main Financial/Business/Technical Strategies and Trends:

Pattern Recognition Over Technical Details: Instead of memorizing syntax or technology-specific features, focus on core conceptual patterns that appear repeatedly across technologies (e.g., typing systems, communication protocols, asynchronous programming).
Understanding Typing Systems:
- Static vs. dynamic typing
- Strong vs. weak typing
These concepts help understand how different programming languages behave and why some bugs occur, especially in loosely typed languages like JavaScript.
Fault Tolerance via Patterns: Example: The Webhook pattern in client-server communication enhances fault tolerance by ensuring events are retried if the server is down, similar to the Observer or Pub/Sub patterns.
Push vs. Pull Communication Models: Recognizing whether a system uses push or pull for data/event delivery is a fundamental pattern that appears in many systems like WebSockets (push) or HTTP polling (pull).
API and Data Format Patterns:
- JSON is dynamically typed, which can cause issues.
- Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) introduce static typing and type safety in APIs, improving reliability.
- Database schema enforcement (e.g., SQL vs. MongoDB) reflects static vs. dynamic typing concepts at the data storage level.
Asynchronous Programming Patterns: Common problems like race conditions and out-of-order execution appear in many contexts, from databases to client applications, and understanding these patterns is crucial for robust system design.
Learning and Problem Solving: Drawing parallels to solving coding challenges (e.g., LeetCode), many problems are variations of the same underlying patterns. Recognizing this helps transition from junior to more advanced levels of understanding.

Methodology / Step-by-step Guide to Leveling Up:

When learning a new programming language or technology:
1. Identify the typing system (static/dynamic, strong/weak).
2. Understand the programming paradigm (object-oriented, procedural, etc.).
3. Learn memory management details (garbage collection, compilation vs interpretation).
4. Recognize communication patterns (push vs pull, pub/sub, observer).
5. Identify asynchronous patterns and common concurrency problems.
6. Abstract away from syntax to see the underlying patterns.
7. Apply this pattern recognition to other systems like APIs, databases, and distributed systems.
8. Use tools like linters or typed languages (e.g., TypeScript) to catch errors early based on these patterns.