Keeping up with tech

For awhile I felt like I needed to keep up with the latest and greatest technologies otherwise I'd fall behind. That was until I realized it's completely untenable, unrealistic, and not necessary.

Jake Archibald - developer advocate from Google:

“When I left university, I felt I knew all of the web platform. Partially because the web was simpler, but also I was an arrogant little shit who didn’t know how much I didn’t know.

As new features appeared and I learned more about the existing platform, I realised I wasn’t capable of knowing it all. At first this felt like a personal failing, but I’ve since made peace with it.”

The thing about technology is, it evolves at a rate that no human can possibly keep up with, and thats actually a good thing.

# It gives us more options

Lodash has probably close to a hundred methods, and the Javascript language itself has...? Well, lets not even try counting that. And I should mention that Javascript is now on a yearly release cycle. That is a certainly a lot of choice, but it doesn't mean we need to understand it all, it just means we have more answers should the need arise.

# Embrace change, enjoy the present

The software you wrote yesterday will always be worse than what you're writing today. Things can always be refactored, written more efficiently and more concisely. What's really important though, is it works, and your customers, bosses and managers are happy. They don't care what version of Node.js it runs on or whatever awesome CSS tricks you pulled off, they're just happy that things actually work.

# Further resources

Sindre Sorhus has put together a pretty awesome list and 2ality is a great place for javascript news. Theres also CSS-tricks, Codepen, and Smashing Magazine to name a few more. I'm going to compile my own list of favorites soon, so stay tuned and happy coding!