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Discussion on: How to not be a dinosaur.

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vgrovestine profile image
Vincent Grovestine • Edited

As a recovering Cretacious-era developer, thanks! I needed to read this today.

...Although I do take exception with your "...and even Coldfusion in a dark era..." remark--I have fond memories of the Allaire/Macromedia ColdFusion days! :)

My career dates back to the dot-com bust period, working as a back-end developer when vanilla code was king, a basic RDBMS was enough, and tables were still an acceptable layout method.

Along the way, I got further and further away from the code, delving more into consulting and support. And just like a frog in a pot on the stove, I boiled without hardly noticing.

Now, after many years in an "applied IT" capacity, I have the itch to get back to my roots. ...Holy crap, is that prospect ever overwhelming!

So today, I went into the basement in search of knowledge. (I work in an academic library; however, just as in the "real world", all things IT are relegated to a dark, window-less room. :P)

My reading material for the coming weeks:

books: "Programming Ruby", "Don't Make Me Think!", "Why Software Sucks..."

One step at a time, right? One step at a time...

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dreamdealer profile image
Johan van Tongeren

Hi vincent! First off; I have good memories of my Coldfusion time too. But CF got a bit of a meme status in our office, so the "dark era" remark was more of an inside joke. No hard feelings ;-)

If you feel like moving back to your roots I can only support that choice! You've got to do what makes you happy. But since it's so overwhelming sometimes it's good to take baby steps and also: focus on one aspect. Don't try to master all the frameworks and tools at the same time. Just start with a simple Hello World and expand from that.

And by the way: I am very lucky not to work in a dark windowless basement. Instead of that me and my colleagues work in one of the prettiest old buildings in our city with an awesome view of a park and some monumental buildings.

my office