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How are you keeping up with this deluge of technology?
Sahil Malik has an interesting post about the keeping with the pace of technology. He posted an impressive list of technologies that he manage to get a handle on in a short time.
Frankly, I use a simpler approach for keeping up with technology. I don't. A while ago my company had a guy who dedicate a significant amount of his time to finding out everything there was to know about new and upcoming Microsoft technologies. The end result was that we would get several emails a day, each containing references to multiply resources, from videos to white papers, and everything in the middle. I used to read those emails, just to know what I didn't know, it grew to be a really big list.
My current method of learning stuff is to know just enough about the model upfront, and wait until I have need/wish to use the technology in a real project. To take WCF as an example, it means that about a year and a half ago, I sat in a user group lecture about it, learned that it had something to do with ABC, and left it at that stage ever since. A few weeks ago I needed to know a bit more, so I did. But I won't get into it in any serious capacity until I would have a real need for it.
What this means is that I can talk with some knowledge about a lot of technologies, but that I rely on being able to ramp up knowledge fairly quickly, more than learning up front. I refuse to say: "I do this and that, but not that" (see the tag line), and I just don't see any other option.
The most important thing that you need to understand about new technology is what its model is. This actually mean: "what the mental model that the developers for this technology had in mind". Once you grok that, the rest is mostly implementation details.
Comments
I agree completely. Listen to the evangelism, take it on board and wait.
Wait until you need it...
LINQ however is something I need!
Ayende,
Ever heard the phrase, "Little knowledge is a dangerous thing"?
I think what you suggest here, is about all we can do anymore. It isn't the ideal case where an architect does know and understand a wide array of technologies.
.NET is going the C++ route frankly, it used to be C, then C++, then Win32 (and until there it was manageable). Then we had MFC, STL, OWL API, ATL, COM - BOOM! (Boom isn't a real technology).
Gotta run. :)
SM
@Sahil,
Absolutely, I agree that this isn't the best solution for technologies that _I am not using_. I have at least a passing familiarity with those.
I do insist on knowing a lot more about the stuff that I am using.
When I read the first two paragraphs, I started formulating a comment; lo and behold, I found something strikingly similar to that comment in the last three paragraphs! Now, here's a question: how easy is it to discover the model? Where do you go for this? Do you know of places to get models in a nice, distilled format, or do you have to do the distilling yourself? I had a very difficult time figuring out the ASP.NET designers' mentality; I don't think I understand it very well even now, but I do have a better idea.
I feel like I am starting to understand core, language and framework-independent issues and paradigms; connecting these with a particular language or framework seems [significantly] harder than it otherwise could be.
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