Clemens, I totally sympathize. Even given that I'm about to transition to a more academic mode, I know I'll never even start with all the technologies in which I'd like to become an expert. This really struck me today when I was looking at some VS2005 functionality for a client. The sheer weight of new features that I wanted to check out was crushing: Indigo support, Avalon support, VSTS integration, web project improvements… And the underlying technologies themselves: WinFS, XML and Web Service innovations, generics…and that's not even counting all the other stuff I'm interested in, like Ruby and LISP. It's just not humanly possible to get to it all. (For me, at least: maybe someone smarter could manage it.)
Oh well: while I can't possibly learn everything, at least it'll be fun to try. :)
Long back I had blogged about .NET 2.0 being like FuddRuckers. Lets just say, all of Microsoft Technology...
ReplyDeleteI think that we are living at a time were many, many new interesting things are surfacing. If you are a little bit like me and learning a new tool or language makes your brain work better, then so many interesting things fighting for your attention causes a lot of anxiety.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I have to put my head back in place and remind me that I do not need to master everything *now*. If I ever get to master something it will always be with a considerable amount of invested time.
I'm definitely familiar with the anxiety effect. I do occasionally find myself staring up the mountain and thinking "it's too high". But I've been hiking often enough to realize that one step at a time adds up after a while. ;)
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more. I have been on the information overload train for a while now. The complexity of products coming out from Microsoft alone is not making it easy.
ReplyDeleteI think we need to focus on core skills and use a network of knowledgeable peers to fill the void in a project.
My 2 cents.
Craig Andera: "I know I'll never even start with all the technologies in which I'd like to become an expert." I struggle with this all the time and have for about 5 years now. All of the new technologies and...
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ReplyDeleteYou won't need to learn LISP when you have C#2.
http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=IteratorsWithC2
Yeah, I'm familiar with iterators. I used them when we wrote MSDN2. While very nice, I don't think it's quite everything that LISP has to offer.
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