[brildum]

If you increase your skill/knowledge that doesn't hinder your ability to use PeopleSoft/SharePoint. It certainly expands your options. While you can get a good salary using those technologies, eventually they will be obsolete. When that happens, we'll start to see news stories posted on some future-HN about how older IT workers are being passed up for younger, fresher IT workers and how it is a biased industry. When in fact, its just a group of people who decided that sitting in their comfort zone doing their day-to-day was good enough and when it was time to move on, they couldn't find any other jobs that fit their particular niche they'd had for the last decade(s).

[uberPhil]

Or it could just be that the younger crowd is using the tech that is popular today, therefore they are in higher demand.

10 years from now some next best thing will replace Ruby and the cycle continues..

As in my original post, the issue I have is the concept of knowing how to write your own language being considered a HIGHER skill then someone knowing Sharepoint or visual basic in depth.

Who's right is it to say that my particular skill is better or higher then yours..

[brildum]

Knowing how hardware works, how languages are compiled/designed, how libraries are architected. It can only increase your knowledge of [insert technology here].

I think you're confusing "Levels" with A > B (A is better than B) when in reality the point is that: A comes after B. You must first understand B, then you can move on to the next level in your path of understanding programming.