[tapan_k]

> Another solution could be encouraging personal projects.

Agree. This is necessary to encourage learning, which helps keep people sharp, which in turn benefits the projects that they are working on in the day job. Even if the technology is the "same old".

A couple of decades ago, many software developers were content using the tools they had and knew. Few demonstrated the eagerness and openness to try something new. These few were also the ones who were better at coming up with out of the box solutions because they were willing to try something new -- both tools and/or approaches. Now, we have reached a point where the bare minimum required of a software developer is familiarity and comfort with the new and shiny, leading to the reverse problem we had early on. Now, people can spend way too much time and energy learning and trying out new tech that they miss out on the opportunity of staying long enough with a technology to learn from experience.

In other words, today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity.

[clifanatic]

> encourage learning

Hell, I'd settle for just not discouraging it so damned hard.

[jalfresi]

"..today we spend way too much time on accidental complexity than on essential complexity"

This. So much this!