[dredmorbius]

My suspicion is that the answer is "learning isn't doing".

These are two different functional modes. The mastery of acting without conscious thought is very hard to attain. See also flow (Cziczentmihaly) and related topics.

Learning incrementally can help, and I'd structured my own career such that I was doing that. I ultimately opted out of it when that stopped being an option. I was simply spending all my time catching up, and not finding myself (nor, to a very large extent, any of my peers) actually proficient with the New Hawtness.

[beat]

I've been in the industry 20+ years. The only technologies I've used consistently are Unix, and relational databases. The languages I work with, the frameworks, all of that stuff is new since I started, long ago. So yes, you have to keep learning.

But that doesn't mean you have to live on the bleeding edge, either! A tech that is proven out, used widely and stable, that's worth investing time to learn. In Crossing the Chasm terms (great book on marketing!), you need to learn early majority tech, not early adopter tech. You can be an early adopter for kicks, of course, but don't pretend it's to be more valuable.

[dredmorbius]

Fair point, though many of the tools I've used tended toward evolutionary development. Came a point a bunch of stuff was being binned and/or wall-flung pasta-style.

[nightski]

Maybe you just aren't very good at picking languages? No offense but I have been using C, C++, C#, Python, and JavaScript for what - almost 15-20 years now?

[beat]

More I hop jobs a lot. I was using C at the beginning of my career. Lately, I'm using C again (and more importantly, using arcane C skills that no one has anymore, doing a 32-64 bit port). I picked up Java in 2001. I've done a fair bit of Ruby, too. Doing Python in the current gig, which is mostly new to me but trivial to learn.

The point is, I haven't had to deal with C for a long time. It's odd to be doing it again.