Fashions come into style and go out of style and when they’ve gone you often look at pictures of yourself and think “why on earth did I wear that”.Its no different in software development, with various tech gaining favour and becoming “fashionable” with everybody wanting to be using that tech only to find that it drops out of fashion later. It used to take years for things to become unfashionable but with the rate of change increasing this may drop to a few months or even weeks.
For example at the moment micro-services appear to be becoming fashionable but interestingly if you follow the conversations around this you’ll find that its really “SOA done right”, and SOA apparently became unfashionable a while back.
As with fashion the popularity of a particular technology is decided not necessarily by its technical merits but by widespread adoption think VHS vs BetaMax.
For the most part people will tend to follow fashion and this is why you suddenly see a lot of people pick up the latest fashionable tech without stopping to consider if it actually fulfils a need or solves a problem they have.
When you see the next fashion in tech don’t be blinded by the new and shiny, take the time to investigate it and see if it is actually useful to you before deciding to use it.
Also look around and consider alternatives, there is a big eco-system out there and you might be surprised at what you find when you don’t follow the latest fashion.
Good points, I think for some following fashion is the en-vogue to do, I think for others its more about a new framework Y based on X therefore it must make my life easier. Does easier mean simplifying complex problems or getting to that ultimate Borg ideal of "pure code"?
ReplyDeleteFor me personally I have learnt its never best to be on top of the crest of a wave as that can lead to wipe out. Its far better to be behind and see what the winner is. More importantly as you have pointed out make sure you are on the right wave in the first place. Either way being slightly behind has more advantages.
Oh BTW you have got a small typo "drops of of fashion later"
typo fixed, thanks.
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