We all are constantly learning new technologies and strategies to be more effective at our jobs, or just because they interest us. How do you balance the need to stay on top of the latest and greatest changes in our industry with making a product? How do you take a new hire with amazing potential and help them learn everything they need to know, while shipping at the same time? Shipping code as soon as possible isn't a cutthroat business decision. It helps people learn faster, be more effective, feel more valued, and keeps them centered on the right goals. How do you balance learning with shipping code? Is there any reason they have to be separate? Too often we feel that these are discrete tasks. Benefits of learning technology by applying it to real world problems are: - Fixing a real world problem - Learning something that is immediately useful - Remembering it better than if you had learned the theory Dangers to consider include: - Not everyone learns the same way - Real world problems can be vastly more difficult than you expect, unless you've already solved them - Revealing embarrassing legacy code and decisions earlier than you'd like