I especially liked the first one, which described the idea of "innovation tokens": every startup or project gets three innovation tokens. If you decide to use a new development language, you've just spent one. A new framework, you've just spent another, and so on. If you spend more than three, your chances of launching reach epsilon.
I find that as I'm getting to be an older (and older, sigh...) developer, I'm also more and more reluctant to keep throwing away all of the knowledge and hard-won skills I've developed in favor of picking up new ones. It seems enormously, almost criminally wasteful. How many times should I throw away tens of thousands of lines of code in polished, battle-tested libraries, and knowledge of edge cases and gotchas and little efficiencies and everything else, so that I can start over again with a blank slate and a new language and a long road of new bugs and edge cases to learn?
No other industry is as wasteful in terms of talent expended than ours is. Imagine if every single bridge ever built in this country was torn down and replaced every five years with a new bridge that featured new materials and new technology.
Some similar articles and threads:
- Choose Boring Technology: http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology, comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291215
- Chasing the Shiny and New: https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html, discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279008
- Tech is moving too fast for me, I'm out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7947551
etc.
I especially liked the first one, which described the idea of "innovation tokens": every startup or project gets three innovation tokens. If you decide to use a new development language, you've just spent one. A new framework, you've just spent another, and so on. If you spend more than three, your chances of launching reach epsilon.
I find that as I'm getting to be an older (and older, sigh...) developer, I'm also more and more reluctant to keep throwing away all of the knowledge and hard-won skills I've developed in favor of picking up new ones. It seems enormously, almost criminally wasteful. How many times should I throw away tens of thousands of lines of code in polished, battle-tested libraries, and knowledge of edge cases and gotchas and little efficiencies and everything else, so that I can start over again with a blank slate and a new language and a long road of new bugs and edge cases to learn?
No other industry is as wasteful in terms of talent expended than ours is. Imagine if every single bridge ever built in this country was torn down and replaced every five years with a new bridge that featured new materials and new technology.