I do not agree with the overall point. In order to stay relevant you have to build stuff and in building it, you have to constantly improve your techniques, whi

I do not agree with the overall point. In order to stay relevant you have to build stuff and in building it, you have to constantly improve your techniques, while dealing with scalability (of development, of features, of a bigger consumer base, of growth in general). If you do that, the other stuff will come naturally. I hate learning new tools. That hasn't stopped me from hitting every single bullet on his list and my list of technologies I worked with is probably bigger than his ... but I learned in response to challenges I faced, not because I feared that I'm no longer relevant (what an awkward notion btw). I couldn't give a damn about what the popular du-jour tools are - I only read about them in passing, then later if I have a concrete problem, maybe I'll remember something about tool X and then I'll go check out if it solves my problem or not. So basically I consider it far more valuable being able to recognize pain-points, being able to say "this sucks, I need something better" and then act on it. Being able to say NO to certain tools, paradigms and platforms is also a valuable trait. I'm pretty sure that right now developers that worked with and invested time in learning ASP (the original) regret making that choice, especially since far healthier alternatives were available and that are still relevant today. Common sense and good taste should reign supreme (not mentioning a general preference for open-source, but that's another topic for another day). And that's the healthy attitude. Learning tools and protocols for staying relevant will ensure that you will end up outdated, while the developers that focus on learning about algorithms, design and business will be with us for a really long time.