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First to your lack of focus. I had the same issue. I jumped around various languages like Scala and Closure and D. I would jump around background products like

First to your lack of focus. I had the same issue. I jumped around various languages like Scala and Closure and D. I would jump around background products like Mongo or Arango or PostgreSQL. Probably for the same reason for you: novelty driven by a sense of the industry leaving me behind. I think this is a false sense driven by HN and the like. Startups playing with new things made me feel that my Java centric knowledge was outdated. They would say, "look at the scale we achieved with clusters of Node and Mongo." When I looked at what they were doing, what they actually produced the sheen faded. A generation spent on ads. Then I turned my attention to a problem that I have and to another faced by my clients. This gave me clarity. Stay aware of new tools and techniques, but realize they are just tools and techniques. Don't lust after them. Rather look how and if they can be applied to your problems. Look if they are a better fit. See if they can help you achieve your goals in a compressed timeline. Then dig in. As for teams and deadlines, that is not really a matter of tech. Poor teams occur even in the newest tech. I've seen people totally misunderstand, at best, and squander Hadoop and its tooling. I've seen systems that used proper decoupled design rot into a quagmire of failure due to people not reading about software architecture or the tools in the stack. You have to power through this. In such situations, I've seen first hand that people want leadership even if during the process of asserting that they despise you.

nickbauman 10y ago
To the initial problem, this is pretty good practical advice. However, the bigger picture is to always remember burnout is the intersection of a long period of hard work coupled with a rising disinterest. Always ask the question: Are you having fun AND are you learning something? If the answer is "no" for both more than 1/2 the time, you need to find another gig. For no other reason than you're going to start sucking at the one you're at while you're consumed by burnout. We could discover a breakthrough in AI any year now. But the possible is not the probable. Most of the revolutionary work done in computing was accomplished by 1980 or so. What's left at this point is incremental improvements on that. Still lots of work to do, but look outward from computing: there are many, many problems facing humankind right now. The world needs you. Your skill coupled with your humanity could be the difference between saving us from ourselves or a new dark age. Every second counts.
dimal 10y ago
The way I deal with the lack of focus was to simply stop reading HN, /r/programming or any programming blogs for about six months. I just focused on working with the tools I knew and stuck with them, whether they were the best or not. I wasn't constantly distracted by new shiny stuff, wondering "Should I have used X instead?" It gave me a lot more confidence as a programmer. Instead of wondering whether some framework or tool would solve my problem, I remembered that I can solve those problems myself. That's what programming is. It's not just plugging frameworks together. It's actually solving problems with your brain, and that's the fun part. After that experience, I can follow tech developments with a lot more detachment. I'll sometimes get into things that genuinely look to solve a problem I'm hitting, but I don't feel any compulsion to use the latest, bestest stuff. And I enjoy programming much more than I had been.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I have the focus problem, but for different reasons. I don't have a job, and I'm excited about EVERYTHING, old and new.
salex89 10y ago
Completely feel you... I'm in the completely same situation. My main language in the past three years is generally Java, but I worked in Node.js, actively working in Scala (Play, Akka and the bunch) and now I'm taking a bit of Python in a side project. I generally like to work with different databases so switching is not that huge to me, as databases go. But yet I feel left out. I see every day things about Elixir, D, Clojure, all kinds of different databases, front-end stuff coming up (although I'm purely back-end big-data/analytics/database guy), and it's anxious. I also have a soft-spot for IoT stuff. The thing is not helped when reading articles and comments that say you should touch as many paradigms as you can, learning a language each month, reading a book each week and so on. And if you don't you manage your time badly and you sleep too much. I'm not saying I don't invest into myself, I take webinars often and my Kindle is always by my hand, but jeez sometimes it's overwhelming.

nickbauman 10y ago

To the initial problem, this is pretty good practical advice. However, the bigger picture is to always remember burnout is the intersection of a long period of hard work coupled with a rising disinterest. Always ask the question: Are you having fun AND are you learning something? If the answer is "no" for both more than 1/2 the time, you need to find another gig. For no other reason than you're going to start sucking at the one you're at while you're consumed by burnout. We could discover a breakthrough in AI any year now. But the possible is not the probable. Most of the revolutionary work done in computing was accomplished by 1980 or so. What's left at this point is incremental improvements on that. Still lots of work to do, but look outward from computing: there are many, many problems facing humankind right now. The world needs you. Your skill coupled with your humanity could be the difference between saving us from ourselves or a new dark age. Every second counts.

dimal 10y ago

The way I deal with the lack of focus was to simply stop reading HN, /r/programming or any programming blogs for about six months. I just focused on working with the tools I knew and stuck with them, whether they were the best or not. I wasn't constantly distracted by new shiny stuff, wondering "Should I have used X instead?" It gave me a lot more confidence as a programmer. Instead of wondering whether some framework or tool would solve my problem, I remembered that I can solve those problems myself. That's what programming is. It's not just plugging frameworks together. It's actually solving problems with your brain, and that's the fun part. After that experience, I can follow tech developments with a lot more detachment. I'll sometimes get into things that genuinely look to solve a problem I'm hitting, but I don't feel any compulsion to use the latest, bestest stuff. And I enjoy programming much more than I had been.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

I have the focus problem, but for different reasons. I don't have a job, and I'm excited about EVERYTHING, old and new.

salex89 10y ago

Completely feel you... I'm in the completely same situation. My main language in the past three years is generally Java, but I worked in Node.js, actively working in Scala (Play, Akka and the bunch) and now I'm taking a bit of Python in a side project. I generally like to work with different databases so switching is not that huge to me, as databases go. But yet I feel left out. I see every day things about Elixir, D, Clojure, all kinds of different databases, front-end stuff coming up (although I'm purely back-end big-data/analytics/database guy), and it's anxious. I also have a soft-spot for IoT stuff. The thing is not helped when reading articles and comments that say you should touch as many paradigms as you can, learning a language each month, reading a book each week and so on. And if you don't you manage your time badly and you sleep too much. I'm not saying I don't invest into myself, I take webinars often and my Kindle is always by my hand, but jeez sometimes it's overwhelming.