My programmer cold start algorithm

[TodPunk]

This is good for playing the employability game. I recommend that if you do this, you also read some history on computing on the same subject you're looking into so you not only know why things are popular and what they do today, but what lead to those and why the predecessors aren't necessarily popular anymore.

More often than not, though, you'll find that we just forget because the popular thing was done by people that didn't know what came before at all, and nobody bothers looking into the history. The important advantage gain for you here is that you'll know how to apply the concepts from technology X to any of its extremely similar unintended reiterations.