I’ve always prided myself for always being on the leading, if not bleeding edge of technology. After a weekend at the No Fluff Just Stuff conference in St. Louis (NFJS), I’m starting to feel both fascinated and frustrated.
The sessions I attended were heavy into dynamic programming languages, and agile software development. The dynamic programming languages that we got deepest into were Groovy and Ruby. Both of these languages make the job of the developer exponentially easier, and are ideal for rapid application development. This in and of itself should be enough to convince developers to use it, but it gets better. Through the magic of dynamic programming, things become possible that were not possible before, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities that blow my mind.
The agile discussions focused on what’s right, and wrong, with various agile processes. There were a lot of really great tips, and it was as good to hear about what we are doing wrong as it was to hear about what we are doing wrong.
So the fascination part should be pretty clear. By the end of the weekend I had soaked in so much great information, and had learned so much, that I had that partially numb, partially tingly feeling that is fairly unique to such an experience. There is no question that I will be attending as many NFJS conferences as I can manage. At least one a year. The knowledge exchange, and networking, were absolutely invaluable.
What was frustrating for me is coming to the realization that I have lost (or more likely misplaced) my edge. I find it exceedingly important to select the technologies that are best to solve a given problem. Choosing the right technology can make the difference between a good solution, and a great solution, or even between a failed project and a raging success. Despite my strong feelings on this, I find myself settling on technologies that I am comfortable with. This is clearly not the way I want to develop my career, and not fair to those that count on my technical expertise to solve their problems.
So this stagnant period in my technological development is frustrating. It is certainly possible that I am being too hard on myself, and that always sticking with Java has been the right decision, but I seriously doubt it. The project I am currently working on, for example, could clearly benefit from the dynamic nature of Groovy, and would also likely have been well served by Grails, and had I been paying more attention, I could have offered that guidance early in the project’s lifecycle. We’re almost to the point where it’s too late to bring something like this in, so convincing those I work with that, “I was wrong before…but I’m right now!” is going to be nearly impossible.
On a positive note, like they say, the first step in dealing with a problem is recognizing that there is a problem, so keep checking back here to follow me in my quest to find my place in this techno-world again.
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