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Comment by dmschulman | Hacker News Reader

"Just because it's there, doesn't mean you must learn it and use it"

You're correct! Except that this is not the way things work in the professional world, and by refusing to learn or use a new technique or library you're stunting your personal development as a tech professional.

ppk's argument boils down to progress outpacing need. Businesses desire the bleeding edge in their online-facing products and if you want to be attractive as talent you need to keep up with the latest development trends. This can lead to frustration, barely getting the time to build stuff with your new skills before the next big framework comes along. The latest and greatest is hip but might not be entirely necessary. This is where we need to focus our attention and strike a balance.

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"Businesses desire the bleeding edge in their online-facing products"

What kind of businesses? In multiple enterprises I've worked with/for, they move at a snail's pace and are resistant to change. I feel like most larger enterprises are at this snail's pace, whether it's b/c of outdated security practices they can't let go of, control issues, IT incompetence, or complacency in the way things are.

The businesses which might be more forward thinking are agencies and some small businesses but I think these are less common. Why do you think it took years to let go of IE6, then IE7, and now IE8 and IE9 in the enterprise world?

I don't buy this idea that everyone has to learn the latest framework or tool to stay competitive. Competitiveness comes from being able to make good work, repeatedly. 'Knowing the right framework' means very little, a good developer will just pick it up on the job anyway. I'd much sooner hire someone with a track record of building good things than one who just happens to 'know' whatever tool or feature we're using.

I feel zero pressure to learn every shiny new thing that comes along. If a new tool/feature seems to be gaining traction or generating a lot of discussion, then yeah I'll read up on it, but I mean reading for an hour or less. It's not a big deal to keep up.

The "need" is this case is being demanded by the end users, not the businesses. ServiceWorker for example solves real user needs, especially in the developing world. This is not "let's use bleeding edge features for bleeding edge sake" but "our users are abandoning our product, so we either need to rewrite as a native app, or lose business"

If these new technologies and frameworks don't have business case to justify their adoption or make any sense from a practical standpoint, believe me they will not pick up and will eventually fall down however hip or cool they sounded or looked right after their debut or launch.

So, I say embrace progress and let the market decide what technologies stay and what to leave behind.

Calling for deliberate stagnation for the web is intellectually disingenuous in light of the Great Web Depression during 2000 - 2005 and the following recession 2005 - 2008 right before iPhone 3G & Chrome launches followed by NodeJS and the HTML5 debut.

For all people worried about the seemingly neck-breaking rate of progress, I assure them that we will sooner or later hit some roadblocks that will slow down the progress and usher in a new era of stagnation for the industry as whole, that has been the case all along for all business and scientific, literary activities, that is the cyclical nature of human activities, but to do it on purpose and to have the audacity to advocate and brand it as a respite or out of concern for the well-being of the developers community is dishonest and totally unacceptable.

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