Developers are busy people. If at any moment they have nothing to do they have to learn otherwise their knowledge will become obsolete! Because there is always some novelty stuff released.
If you look at it some new method of design or a new library to put sparkles and speed on your next software is now released on a daily basis and you can go around bragging how you use the latest technologies.
Being cool today depends on how much one is up to date on the latest things. How much he watches conference videos and how fast he starts using them. Then the star of the weekly pub rally is the one most up to date who can always one up everyone else.
Just last week I got a little project made of all kinds of fancy and state-of-the-art stuff and is fully scalable, coming with a special database… it’s all rad. Just one little problem … what for?
Never in a lifetime will that software have more than six users.
Typical case of a dog and pony show.
The client has no idea of it while the developer likes fireworks and has just blown two truckloads of squibs to impress him. What for? To show what an expert he is! To be the hotshot who really knows his way around the latest technologies?
This guy, however much he follows the latest trend is on the wrong planet. He has mixed up programming with fashion week. Sparkle and glitter are more important than practicality and applicability.
To my best knowledge so far the main purpose of programming is to make the clients life easier…
Notedly, the purpose is to make the biggest improvement in the client’s life using the least amount of energy!
Nothing wrong with using new things. It’s not wrong if what you do is brilliant. It should be!!
But if you do all that while having an adverse effect on the client then in spite of using state of the art things you are not a good professional because you are abusing the fact that the client doesn’t know of these things. You are abusing his trust.
And then you complain the client is an idiot. Because he doesn’t understand how hard it is to be a programmer.
Have I seen a developer who was very good but at the end of the month his job for the entire month had to be thrown out as – although it was modern – it had totally missed the purpose? I have!
The purpose is to make the biggest improvement in the client’s life using the least amount of energy!
And you can only do that if you understand the fundamentals of the field.