[wwweston]

Something I've found as I've gotten older, though, is that I have a stronger and stronger sense of wasted time every time I have to learn a new way of doing the same thing. Particularly if the new way involves a bleeding edge leaky abstraction.

Because every hour I spend investing in a new stack and its details is an hour I can't spend thinking about product-level details, can't spend learning more learning about organizational-level matters, can't spend on improving more timeless investments like statistics, math, and soft/interpersonal skills. Not to mention fun things like music and travel and enjoying the company of people you like.

It wouldn't be so bad if most of the new shiny things in the software world were an order of magnitude better. But saying that 1/4 new frameworks or even languages present tha kind of power/productivity jump would be optimistic.

[fsk]

That is one of my biggest concerns. A lot of the new tools are just different, not better. But you're expected to know all of them.

It's also hard to predict what will be popular five years from now. I thought that using Javascript on the server was pants-on-head retarded, but it's very popular, with no signs of passing on.

[georgemcbay]

" I thought that using Javascript on the server was pants-on-head retarded, but it's very popular"

Well, there's no law against things being both terrible and popular. It is quite common.

[fsk]

What does it say about software as a serious career, if tools that are awful are popular and widely used?