Old and tired?

November 9, 2011 by Michael

Right now i’m at the #jaxcon in Munich. While sitting in a talk, this tweet by @cuchulin caught my attention:

I really don’t think that’s Java who’s old and tired, neither as a language nor an ecosystem. It’s the people, who not only are looking tired but who are. Well, at least, I am.

I’m a curious person and always eager to learn new stuff but the last 3, 4 years the learning process and the stream of new tools, techniques, frameworks and other stuff accelerated even more than it did in the transition from client/server development to multi-tier-architectures 10 years ago.

At each conference there are new tools. New tools to “get things done”, new paradigms to organize your work and new tools to create stuff. It’s getting real hard to choose and if you want to get your head around the full stack, you’ve plenty of stuff to try, read and experiment on.

The last 2 years saw the coming of so many new languages. Some will vanish, some will stay, but it’s for sure: Another field of learning.

Given that situation plus the stream of information we get the whole day now (tweets, g+, facebook and more) it’s a tiring situation. Most of the people in the talks sit in front of their laptops or have an iPad and are constantly checking twitter and the like. Who wouldn’t be tired?

I really appreciated Adam Beans Talk “Just developed” yesterday. We really need to focus more on the things we want to create and to some extend less on the tools and methodologies.

On a personal note: I am tired. Not because of my “hard” family life with a 2-year-old, absolutely no. I just can’t really turn of my head anymore. The boundaries between work, home and spare time are diminishing. Most of the time it’s a good thing because i can spend more time at home with my family but on the other hand i have all the stuff to think about, to read and to try out often for the late evening and then they are to stay in my head.

2 comments

  1. cuchulin wrote:

    In some points I agree with You: Always new tooling new frameworks and new kind of “swiss army knifes and forks”.
    But what is the problem to solve ? Isn’t the problem the important thing which has to be solved ? You say it Yourself, that we should focus on the things we want to create.
    I felt the spirit of people in Railscon or Webinale on the on side and feel the tiredness on the jaxcon.
    I am a long time in enterprise development and I feel the same thing I felt 10 years ago with cobol and the brand new java. I think: “java the cobol of today” (By the way Cobol still exists in your company). The arguments and discussions are the same we made 10 years ago.

    Posted on November 10, 2011 at 9:30 PM | Permalink
  2. Mark Etting wrote:

    Great post! We are linking to this great post
    on our site. Keep up the great writing.

    Posted on August 23, 2015 at 11:31 PM | Permalink
2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
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