Stay Away From The Cutting Edge
A former Gizmodo editor recently lambasted the entire readership by telling them:
You may think you’re making up the “bleeding edge” of “gadget pimpatude” but you’re really just a loose confederation of marks the consumer electronics industry uses as free market research and easy money.
I couldn’t agree more with his sentiment that chasing the cutting edge is a waste of time. This is especially true for businesses.
Working in a technology-heavy industry, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype of the latest gadgets, software, or architectures. Doing so, however, is almost always a bad idea.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of businesses whose success is hinging on a framework like Ruby on Rails or Django. What happens if one of these frameworks emerges as the clear winner and the other is left in the dust? Where will these companies find competent engineers to maintain their software 5 years from now if their architecture is considered obsolete?
The truth is that the people using these systems don’t know the answers to these questions.
In a recent post I claimed that I would, “never use ruby on rails.” I really should have said, “I won’t use ruby on rails within the next two years,” but it wouldn’t have sounded as catchy.
The interesting thing is that several of that post’s comments wished me well as I spiraled into extinction. I feel pity for these people who truly believe they are avoiding obsolescence by learning an architecture that has a high probability of being extinct within 5 years.
Ada sounded really cool when it was released. Do you know anybody who is glad they spent time mastering that language?
Even if we ignore the possibility that the architecture may become extinct, there are other risks to consider. Suppose a security hole is discovered in your architecture that allows outside access to your database and your customers’ credit card information is compromised. Do you think the folks at 37signals are going to take the heat?
What it boils down to is that these architectures aren’t ready for prime time yet. When one (or a handful) of them emerges as the winner, I’ll spend some time mastering it.
In the meantime, I won’t lose sleep over the fact that I am currently using a dead language because I have full confidence in my abilities to catch up to those who already have a few years of experience under their belt.
Just like the need for having the coolest gadgets may be indicative of self-esteem issues, I wonder if the need for learning the latest programming languages shows a lack of confidence. Worrying about extinction seems like a futile and exhausting exercise.
Fortunately, those who put faith in their abilities rather than the latest architecture don’t have to take part.
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Do you think the folks at 37signals are going to take the heat?
Do you think Sun is going to give a wet dog-turd if there’s an issue with the JRE?
Dude… its just risk/reward. Same as every other thing in life. Learning/deploying technology is same as investing in the stock market. If you get in early and pick a technology that works, you can have massive advantages over your competitors (as well as a fairly in demand resume). If it tanks like Ada did (I think you are stretching for this example), then well.. move on. If you dont want the risk, stick with something well established. But dont expect to be faster than your competition.
Personally the type of people most organizations what developing for them are the same type of people who get bored of a technology once it becomes mainstream. An advantage of being cutting edge, is you get cutting edge developers, and not unmotivated bandwagon coders who learned C# because they couldnt get a job doing VB any longer.