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> An incurious person who only learns new stuff when it's forced on them will eventually lose relevance. There's always one of these comments when this topic c

by lj3 10y ago

> An incurious person who only learns new stuff when it's forced on them will eventually lose relevance. There's always one of these comments when this topic comes up. It's simply not true. There are lots of people still working Cobol jobs out there and there's lots of demand for more. C# hasn't changed much in decades. Neither has C++. The only part of tech that moves at breakneck pace is web development and serious engineers consider that to be a cruel joke. And that's coming from a senior web developer with 15 years of web dev experience.

ThrowawayR2 10y ago
> C# hasn't changed much in decades. Neither has C++. Having done C++ back in the days before the STL & Boost were a thing and having done C# back in the C# 2/.NET 2.0 era and recently trying to come back up to speed on C# 6 and .NET 4.6.x, I have to say that that is an ... incredibly surprising assertion to make.
mwfunk 9y ago
I'm no advocate of rapid change for its own sake. I mostly do POSIX systems programming, and the churn of web development frameworks does not appeal to me at all. However, I still want to at least aspire to learn new stuff and stay informed about what other people in my field are doing. Every technology has an expiration date, and as I get older and more ensconced at work, I've been getting paranoid about getting too comfortable. Specifically, I'm paranoid that I know relatively little about web development, period. I am not some twentysomething hipster web guy, I'm a weird middle-aged Unix guy. Although I've rarely pushed myself to learn about something because I felt like I had to- I'm just interested in software and have always enjoyed learning about it. I don't have to force myself to do it, and I probably wouldn't be productive if I did. The only thing that really matters is doing whatever makes you happy. If it has pragmatic side effects, great, but if it doesn't make you happy then it's not worth doing.

by lj3 10y ago

ThrowawayR2 10y ago

> C# hasn't changed much in decades. Neither has C++. Having done C++ back in the days before the STL & Boost were a thing and having done C# back in the C# 2/.NET 2.0 era and recently trying to come back up to speed on C# 6 and .NET 4.6.x, I have to say that that is an ... incredibly surprising assertion to make.

mwfunk 9y ago

I'm no advocate of rapid change for its own sake. I mostly do POSIX systems programming, and the churn of web development frameworks does not appeal to me at all. However, I still want to at least aspire to learn new stuff and stay informed about what other people in my field are doing. Every technology has an expiration date, and as I get older and more ensconced at work, I've been getting paranoid about getting too comfortable. Specifically, I'm paranoid that I know relatively little about web development, period. I am not some twentysomething hipster web guy, I'm a weird middle-aged Unix guy. Although I've rarely pushed myself to learn about something because I felt like I had to- I'm just interested in software and have always enjoyed learning about it. I don't have to force myself to do it, and I probably wouldn't be productive if I did. The only thing that really matters is doing whatever makes you happy. If it has pragmatic side effects, great, but if it doesn't make you happy then it's not worth doing.