Re:In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things
by ownagefool on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @03:17PM
(#5870039)
Programming is more like surfing an infinite amount of tidal waves of information change. Every wave is different, but ultimately they're all just waves regardless of how much people argue which is superior to the other.
Point being, when you're 35 and an expert in your field, you probably need to spend less time learning what the cool kids are up to as opposed to when you're 23 and learning your field and everything you learn is new.
That doesn't mean that you can let yourself not be current, but if your future plans are to work 12 hours per day then go home and read HN at night, I pity your wife and family prospects. :p
Re:In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things
by weavie on Thursday June 13, 2013 @09:15AM
(#5873848)
Yes. And it's not just learning new stuff. It's important to just keep learning stuff.
It's shocking how many of my team mates haven't even heard about Scheme, let alone tried to learn it. And yet learning that language (I'm still working on it) is revolutionising the quality of my code. There's a lot of important stuff that was developed years ago that's just as important as stuff that's coming out today.
(Yeah, that last sentence is a tidal wave of mixed metaphore tossed like a salad.)