[zzzcpan]

  > Today keeping up is a ridiculous job sometimes. 

Even though he advises people to keep up, he actually kind of admits how ridiculous this is today. It's not possible to keep up anymore, there are just too many people creating too many things, like languages, frameworks, technologies.

[emgeee]

I think what he's trying to get at is to stay on top of large industry changes in general. Even though there are many frameworks and libraries being created everyday, it's still reasonable to keep informed about the ones that have a substantial amount of traction.

[aidos]

And you don't have to get too deep into everything. Take frontend js frameworks. You could learn one, say angular and then read about how the others differ. Gives you insight into the whole field.

[zzzcpan]

What kind of large industry changes are we talking about?

[chipotle_coyote]

I don't know if I'd call them "large industry changes," simply because it begs the question of how one defines "large" and "industry." But I know personally I'm facing some frustration as a web developer in my mid-40s due to how much the concept of web developer has become an accelerating target, not merely a moving one. It's only been over the last couple of years that I've started being genuinely concerned that I'm falling behind, but "we're looking for someone who knows Python and Ruby and Coffeescript and AngularJS and MySQL and MongoDB and has previous experience scaling web sites to ten million hits a day" is becoming de rigueur in Silicon Valley.

I don't consider myself too old to learn new things, but there are certain things that are difficult or even impossible to learn noodling around at home -- and even in this Show Me Your Github era, professional experience counts. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be given the chance to learn how to scale web sites to ten million hits a day. I agree with The Codist that as programmers we really are responsible for our own ongoing education, but I'm not convinced that's always sufficient.