As a software developer, my effectiveness doesn't depend on up-to-the-minute knowledge of what's happening in my field. It's more useful to pursue a deeper understanding of the fundamentals.
There are some obvious exceptions on the cutting edge of technology (VR etc) but developers in my position care more about reliably making reliable software that earns (or saves) money. To this end, it's usually better to apply techniques and technologies that are already somewhat mature. I think this is more typical.
This doesn't mean I'm stuck on Java 2, but it means I don't read the papers on Paxos and Dynamo and such (instead I read the Hacker News article on the release of Apache Cassandra and build distributed software on top of relatively-early beta versions - and occasionally the business deals with costs from migrating from Thrift to CQL but the risk was worth it).
There are some obvious exceptions on the cutting edge of technology (VR etc) but developers in my position care more about reliably making reliable software that earns (or saves) money. To this end, it's usually better to apply techniques and technologies that are already somewhat mature. I think this is more typical.
This doesn't mean I'm stuck on Java 2, but it means I don't read the papers on Paxos and Dynamo and such (instead I read the Hacker News article on the release of Apache Cassandra and build distributed software on top of relatively-early beta versions - and occasionally the business deals with costs from migrating from Thrift to CQL but the risk was worth it).