What keeps you from trying out new tech?

As a developer my goal is to create software that people use, (specifially Mint) but as I see, it's really hard for people to take the leap and try something new.

For example, I started to learn Elm 4-5 times before I could actually took the time to understand it and make progress.

I'm curious, what is it that keeps you from trying out new libraries and technologies? and in the end what is the thing that makes you do it?

Comments

[George]

For me, its the time investment needed to understand enough of something new for it to actually be useful. Trying to find time around work and life commitments, its hard to find the few hours I need to get the next step down the path of learning something new.

For example, trying to contribute to DEV on GitHub, learning a whole new ecosystem has now eaten 3 full days of my time for very little progress. Fortunately the nature of my work means that I have that time free at the moment, but its unlikely I will have this amount of time again for a long time.

[Ben Halpern]

I think people need to feel comfortable that something isn't going away tomorrow. In trying to get people to try out DEV in the first place, a lot of it was more about reassurance that we were a safe bet rather than particularly "innovative".

If you ever want to DM me about this, I'd love to help you think about these concepts as you seek adoption with Mint.

Thanks for being part of the community and sharing the Mint journey with us!

[shushugah]

My biggest pain point when trying new software is poor error messages, and without a community of people to help it's difficult to debug. To give a reverse situation, a client of mine was using Ruby 1.8.7p375 long after it was discontinued, but the documentation online and StackOverflow comments still helped me navigate through it. Well known bugs and limitations were clearly documented, supporting gems (which were not many) etc.. were all easily findable online, which is something I cannot easily say for new bleeding edge software.

[Fıratcan Sucu]

Not really sure how to describe it, but it's like "fear of choosing the wrong one" combined with "choosing A, then trying out B when I haven't learned A, then C, then back to A; then just giving up".

[Szikszai Gusztáv]

I remember doing something similar after I left Elm behind with Reason and PureScript switching between the two.