Keeping up to date

[JLafontaine]

It would be interesting to know how other programmers keep themselves up to date with IT.

I read a minimum of 10 pages a day on an IT related subject, usualy much more, it could be articles, books, tutorials, etc. And regulary check the web for new technology.

[Yves M]

I guess that's part of the job, no ? ;)

Regularly I read stuff like The Register (daily) and Tom's hardware (weekly). I know it's not really related to programming but it's still kind of interesting.

Since we have an MSDN subscription from our company I tend to keep up on the changes or news in MS programs and technologies. When I find something new which I don't have a clue about, I ask around or search the net, this usually fills me in.

I also tend to keep up with news about Linux, the kernel and the distributions. It is more of a self-interest though, since my company is not (yet ?) doing anything for that platform.

And then I have to keep up with research in the field of our company's product. This usually means that one of our consultants asks me to take a look at some research paper / company statement and analyze it. Luckily I don't have to check the whole area, since it's quite vast. The stuff I'm pointed to is usually quite interesting and helps our future decisions though, so it's definitely worthwhile.

[proxima centaur]

It is impossible to keep up to date on all the IT or all things related to computers. I read slashdot, the register as for general "news". and I read magazines or papers related to the field I'm working on. namely computer graphics and computer vision. The company I work for subscribes to these magazines and we have a distribution list. Everybody gets to read it during the month and passes it over to the next. That's all I have the time to do if I want to have a social life and still work a bit! hehehe

Honestly, the only thing I'm concerned about is that when I'll stop learning, I'll go behind. Then, it's dangerous.

I've seen people go into deep depression when after 15 years of working and doing the same stuff with DB2 and COBOL on a mainframe, when they finished their contract and go reassigned to a new task, they realized that they didn't know how a desktop computer was working, that a server with workstation was not the way things were done in that context, but rather a distributed topology was, they didn't know about internet, about java or anything that was "cool" or "sexy". That's sad. They weren't bad programmers, they just let themselves fall behind and when they realized it, it was too late. They became very competent in one field, but totally incompetent in another. They are now very dependent on the technology and although they can get a decent salary doing what they do because it is such a rarity, they are still becoming obsolete and will eventually lose their job, with nothing else to do, unless they return to school.

So, let's be careful!

[Platinum Plus]

I keep updated by reading on the internet and suscribing to a few magazines. Developers' sites seem to keep me abreast the most but I tend to fall behind in packaged applications and some OSes.

[cup]

I don't really keep up to date. When new stuff comes out, I read about it but I don't go anywhere near it until after about 3-4 years. By then, a lot of expertise has built up and I can ask lots of people who will know the answers. It is always nice to have someone to ask. Initially, when nobody knows anything, there are lots of prats about who read half the spec and think they know everything.

Also, if it was just a fad, in 3-4 years, nobody will know anything about it so it wasn't worth learning anyway. I took this attitude on WAP, Oberon and Occam.

Sometimes, it is an old idea which has been repackaged under a new trendy name. You probably know the technique: it is just learning what the new name is: like PIMPL idiom, Observer Pattern, diamond problem etc.

[Gabriel Fleseriu]

cup:
Just as a side comment on 'it is just learning what the new name is' (only half serious) :rolleyes: :

I find it immensely boring to have to dig myself thru N pages and links of advertising just to find out what exactly a name (i.e. trademark) is supposed to mean. Like .NET, for example. As it was (pre)released you could find plenty of information on how wonderfull it is, but you would have a hard time finding a plain answer on the question what it is.

Same thing with ADO, DAO and the rest from this family. I have to work only now and then with databases, so I'm not very familiar with them. I always have a hard time to figure out which is what from the documentation :)

[cup]

There are some 'new names' that mean different things to different people. In the 70s, it was structured programming. Like .net, it was wonderful but everyone had a different idea of what it was. In the 80s, it was paradigms (how do you spell that word???), object orientation and encapsulation. There were the 'right' meanings and lots of mis-interpretations.

I only played DCOM about 5 years after it came out. The RPCs were just so different from the Unix ones. It was just Microsoft's version of CORBA. Then I had a play with Visual Modeller. mmm... Microsoft's version of Rational Rose with the nice bits missing.

I too tried to find out what .net was. I've given up now.

Sometimes I have to look up the abbreviations that some of the gurus use in their replies eg POD. I did a search on the net and it came up as Prince Of Darkness. Then Graham said it meant Plain Ol Datatype. After that I started seeing POD all over the place.

[Platinum Plus]

cup There are some 'new names' that mean different things to different people
Most of these proprietary things are now quick becoming defacto standards and you will find many people want to be said to be moving with the times and they all rollover with different definitions and scopes :(

[Gabriel Fleseriu]

Originally posted by cup
Sometimes I have to look up the abbreviations that some of the gurus use in their replies eg POD. I did a search on the net and it came up as Prince Of Darkness. Then Graham said it meant Plain Ol Datatype. After that I started seeing POD all over the place.

Why do some people think that using abbreviations make them to gurus?:D

When I see an abbreviation I don't know, I go to THE CANONICAL ABBREVIATION/ACRONYM LIST (http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/abbrev.html).

[JLafontaine]

When new stuff comes out, I read about it but I don't go anywhere near it until after about 3-4 years. By then, a lot of expertise has built up and I can ask lots of people who will know the answers. It is always nice to have someone to ask.

3 to 4 years is an awfull long time to wait. By the time you get to learn it the technologie is almost obsolete. Are you still running windows 98?:D :D :D :D

I usualy wait a few months, a year at the most. I started to poke around Visual Studio .Net two days ago, and I like it. For the .net technologie, I have no Idea what it is, but will read up it soon.

[cup]

3 to 4 years is an awfull long time to wait. By the time you get to learn it the technologie is almost obsolete. Are you still running windows 98?

I still run DOS6.22 (control system for the greenhouse) and win 95 first edition (a 4Mb 25MHz 486 won't take win 95SE). In fact, I only started using Win 98 when Win 2K came out. Normally by then, MS has sorted out most of the problems and if anything goes wrong, there is always lots of expert advice. I still have a copy of Win 1.x. It fitted on 1 floppy and it was high technology in 1987.

I usualy wait a few months, a year at the most.

I did that with VB when it was V1.0. 6 months later V2 came out, and by 1998, it was up to V6.0. That was it for a couple of years so I thought it was fairly stable. I was thinking of updating my VB3 knowledge to VB6 then VB7 came out. At which point, I decided it wasn't worth the bother.

I also did that with Java. I was pretty expert at V1.02 in 1996, then I got a non-Java job. I left it off for 4 years. When I went back to it, it was completely unrecognizable. The language remained the same but the internal structure had changed and all sorts of new stuff had been added.

Sometimes it is hard to tell whether something will take off or not. POP-2, RTL/2, CHILL, Modula-2 and Ada were the in-things when I left Uni. In the UK, apart from defence establishments, very few places use Ada. I don't know of any place that uses RTL/2, which was SD-Scicon's version of Algol68.

When I first saw POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3), I thought it was the next generation of POP-2: a Scottish programming language!

[Platinum Plus]

Originally posted by cup

I was thinking of updating my VB3 knowledge to VB6 then VB7 came out. At which point, I decided it wasn't worth the bother.


VB7 :confused: Never heard of it. Is it a cynical ref to .Net :(

[cup]

VB7 Never heard of it. Is it a cynical ref to .Net
Not really cynical. I've seen it being called VB7 in lots of places. Also, VC++.net is sometimes called VC7.

I also have lots of S/W that I've never bothered to learn how to use like Prolog, Spitbol (a version of Snobol4) and Visual FoxPro. It was free so I got it but I've never loaded it on any machine.