

The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear? - nikosmar
http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/04/greatest-developer-fallacy-or-wisest.html
"I will learn it when I need it"! I've heard that phrase a lot over the years; it seems like a highly pragmatic attitude to foster when you're in an industry as fast-paced as software development. On some level it actually IS quite pragmatic, but on another level I am annoyed by the phrase. It has become a mantra for our whole industry which hasn't changed said industry for the better. The problem is this, in the guise of sounding like a wise and practical developer, people use it as an excuse to coast. There is too much stuff to know, it is necessary to be able to pick certain things up as you go along – part of the job. But, there is a difference between having to "pick up" some knowledge as you go along and doing absolutely everything just-in-time.
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kls
The problem is that the article misses is that there is an opportunity cost of
specializing, specialize in the wrong thing and your career is over. Try
finding a Cold Fusion job now that it has seen it's glory days, sure they are
still around but if you loose your job, it may be a long road until you land
in another job that fits your specialty. At a certain age many developers do
specialize, many of them tend to sunset with a widely adopted technology. Take
COBOL for example, if you participated in COBOL development you would meet a
lot of specialist, because most of the people in that technology are past the
point of choosing to specialize. Participating in the latest technology is
always going to create a filtered bubble of generalist, those are the ones
that have less opportunity loss in transitioning.

