On Being Blow Away by Technology

While watching Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, and Brian Goldfarb demonstrate Silverlight 4, I had a range of reactions:

  • Wow! I’ve got to play with this stuff!
  • I’m feeling overwhelmed by the avalanche of technology
  • How will I find the time to do billable work and stay current with this great stuff?
  • Maybe I can convince my client to switch the app in development from ASP.NET 3.5 to Silverlight 4?

It’s all so exciting, unnerving, and, in a certain way, upsetting to be so blown away by technology.

Ken

6 Comments

  • I hear ya! What sucks is when you work in an environment where they are very slow to upgrade to new technology. We just upgraded from SQL Server 2000 to 2005 a month or so ago. Never mind that 2008 has already been out for several months. We could only upgrade to 2005 :(.

    Regarding Silverlight I still haven't even made my way through the Silverlight 2 book and now you're talking about Silverlight 4. Slow down, Microsoft!

  • I think Microsoft have too many people trying to throw out new tools and technologies to justify why they should not be laid off. Silverlight 3.0 just came out and now they are showing Silverlight 4. Also, .NET 3.5 is less than 2 years old and now .NET 4 is coming out soon. How many are still trying to caught up to .NET 3.0? Have you mastered important things in .NET 2.0 yet? Most of the new tools is about trying to pull out the last drops of blood from this thing called object oriented programming or just copying something done somewhere else.

  • Yeah, i have the same feeling for long time. I have been working mainly in ASP.NET from 2.0 to 3.5.

    I lost my way with others, since when i started to try MVC, then lots of information about silverlight came up, and WPF, WCF, ....

    Just a thought, i have not found the solution to keep up with yet.

  • i'm in the same boat, I only just started scratching the surface of SL 3.0 in the anticipating that 4.0 was coming out next year at Mix. Now you have .NET 4.0 right round the corner whilst I am trying to get my mcpd for 3.5.

    The feature list for SL 4.0 is awesome, my only wish is that more companies start moving to SL rather than sticking it out with Flash.

    How does one keep on top of everything ?

  • What I try to do is concentrate on a core area. Although I am proficient at WinForms and am aware of Silverlight, WPF and others, I try and concentrate on web applications and frameworks. That way I don't get swamped by all these technologies. It is important however to know just enough of these technologies so you can make a sound judgment as to how they could benefit you on a new project.

  • And people at Microsoft wonder why things like Dynamic Data, Astoria, Cardspace, WF, etc. never caught on. SLOW DOWN!

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