This is your career...on Java?
Recently, we took a week long vacation in Crimea, a region of Ukraine that is located on the Black Sea. It's an 18 hour train ride to Simferopol and from there, it's 2 hours by bus to the city of Sudak. It was on the train that I draw the inspiration for this latest blog post.
Alright, I'll admit the picture is a little inflammatory, but it illustrates a key problem that developers face when a new language (say, Ruby?) comes along and "threatens" all the effort they have invested in their current choice of technologies (not just Java).
What I find interesting in my career today is that I am now seeing a second wave of obsolescence with regards to careers in programming. I saw it early in 1997 with the shift from Powerbuilder to Java, and I think I am seeing it again with the transition of Java to the likes of Ruby and Python.
But where are the parallels found in the picture? Well, the toilet was probably an original fixture of the train, likely about 30 years old. Sure, it's beat up, used, over abused, but it is still functional. People have learned to be (ahem) comfortable with the level of service it can provide and as a result, learn to live with it's obvious shortcomings. Like a complicated J2EE framework, you don't just lift the lid and do what needs to be done, you have to mount the beast, balancing on the edge of the rim while holding on tight to the handle on the wall (not shown in picture) and hope for the best. Wouldn't it be nicer to put in a new toilet? Sure, it would mean that you might have to give up your finely honed balancing skills, but at least you wouldn't risk breaking your neck each time the train shifts tracks.
Learn something new, or as my grandma used to say, "Get off the pot!"
Alright, I'll admit the picture is a little inflammatory, but it illustrates a key problem that developers face when a new language (say, Ruby?) comes along and "threatens" all the effort they have invested in their current choice of technologies (not just Java).
What I find interesting in my career today is that I am now seeing a second wave of obsolescence with regards to careers in programming. I saw it early in 1997 with the shift from Powerbuilder to Java, and I think I am seeing it again with the transition of Java to the likes of Ruby and Python.
But where are the parallels found in the picture? Well, the toilet was probably an original fixture of the train, likely about 30 years old. Sure, it's beat up, used, over abused, but it is still functional. People have learned to be (ahem) comfortable with the level of service it can provide and as a result, learn to live with it's obvious shortcomings. Like a complicated J2EE framework, you don't just lift the lid and do what needs to be done, you have to mount the beast, balancing on the edge of the rim while holding on tight to the handle on the wall (not shown in picture) and hope for the best. Wouldn't it be nicer to put in a new toilet? Sure, it would mean that you might have to give up your finely honed balancing skills, but at least you wouldn't risk breaking your neck each time the train shifts tracks.
Learn something new, or as my grandma used to say, "Get off the pot!"
posted by AR at 7:20 AM
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