Lets not get bogged down in the tennis; I don't even play tennis, I just chose it because almost everyone recognises that investing time in fundamental skills i

Lets not get bogged down in the tennis; I don't even play tennis, I just chose it because almost everyone recognises that investing time in fundamental skills is important in sports. I spent some time, last August, playing with Haskell. This didn't help me build the next thing I needed to. I didn't need Haskell to help me solve any immediate problem either then, or since. I spent that time because I believe that the experience will make me a better programmer, in the long run, and give me a bigger toolbox with which to conceptualize problems. I thought that, in the long run, in some sense, it would improve my fundamentals. You seem to be arguing that things are so dynamic, that there's no point making long term investments like that. If things were so dynamic that I thought there was a good chance I'd be making sandwiches for a living next week, I'd agree. But things do not change that fast in programming. There's a copy of SICP on my desk that I'm reading; its the 2nd Edition from 1996, of a 1984 book, and the code is in Scheme. And I don't feel like I'm wasting my time reading it, at all!