Product designer of 6+ years here. As a beginner product designer you can read all the theory and resources you want - but if you don't practice actually making stuff alongside it your work won't improve.

Design, and UI design is a pretty hard thing to learn theory first. You gotta put it into practice by making something, thinking critically about it (and seek critique from others) and then remaking.

Just to throw another approachable resource in. https://www.refactoringui.com/

Open figma and start making something!

I’ll add the critical component of making something and watching others try to use it. My imagination is always getting pushed to imagine the ways people will use/misuse/misunderstand/repurpose something I’ve built!

I've considered trying to learn some product design skills as a developer both for my own personal project benefit and for work. This looks like a solid resource. Thanks!

I was looking into it but man that's all so boring. How can I motivate it to consume this content and learn something from it?

Don’t learn it if you don’t want to and don’t need to.

On the other hand, if you want a lighter introduction to design, try watching one of Gary Hustwit’s films like Helvetica, Objectified, or Rams. Or read the Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

I can vouch for the Design of Everyday Things too (granted I got the advice from another HN post). It's a brilliant book that exposes you to some of the common pitfalls of product design and gives you many mental frameworks to work with to embrace your designs' shortcomings and, most importantly, address them.

Wow. I almost skipped all the book recs as is usual for me with UX and design stuff, but you totally sold me on this one.

Russ Cox has written a great article on comparing regex engine speeds [0]. It taught me a lot about finite automata.

[0] https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html

thanks for the content! However, I was expecting a bank of links to tools, courses, examples... That would be a great gig!