Exactly. You always have a choice, most of these things can be punted on. For example, I continued to use svn for many years before transitioning to git, despit

Exactly. You always have a choice, most of these things can be punted on. For example, I continued to use svn for many years before transitioning to git, despite everyone around me saying how great it was. It was a tradeoff, I am happy to know and love git now but at the time I wasn't ready to add that to my plate of complexity. In the end, I was able to focus on shipping sooner instead of learning a new SCM. The trick is learning how to recognize when something is no longer a fad but a true shift, and git eventually became obviously that, so I took the time to learn it. I think the ThoughtWorks Radar is a good resource for this type of thing: http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/#/ http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/#/ The assumption in this article is that you always have to be using the latest whiz bang tools and platforms, but that's up to you -- the "fashion" aspect of software development is the problem, not the tools per se.