Everything you know will be obsolete within 5 years
You may still remember in the article "Career programming: before age 40 you should have plan B" posted on the Vinacode blog with the statistics of the NSF investigation department about the comparison of the life of the programmer and construction profession in the United States:
“Six years after graduating from college, 57% of computer science graduates work as programmers; after 15 years of graduation, the number dropped to 34%, and after 20 years of graduation – when most people turned 40 – this rate dropped to 19%. In contrast, this number corresponds to construction engineers of 61%, 52% and 52%. ”
After looking at the above comparison results, you must have made a reason yourself? I have read somewhere that the construction industry is about 50 years old, completely renewed, while the software industry is only 10 years old ; That means that a construction engineer with the knowledge gained at school can be comfortable sitting around and working hard for years, while a software engineer almost has to learn new knowledge every day. .
The software development industry also follows Moore's Law According to "Moore's law" predicted by Intel co-founder Gorden Moore, every 18 months the computer's processing speed will be doubled. And does that mean that the software development industry will also grow at that speed? Every few weeks you hear a programming language, or a framework or some other new technology comes out … and you have to go into research again, but at some point you will wonder if in the profession What software is the least or the least change to stick to it? Please take a moment to ponder before finding the answer will be in this article!
"There are only two things that are infinite: the universe and the foolishness of humans, and I'm not sure about the first thing." ~ Albert Einstein
As a programmer, I always have to update new knowledge every day.
One of the most bizarre points of the software development industry is that knowledge quickly becomes obsolete. Dan Appleman cited a parable from the work of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, which illustrates this problem very well:
'Come on! Come on! ' Shouted the Queen. 'Hurry up! Hurry up!' And they ran so fast that they seemed to be surfing the air, their feet rarely touched the ground, until suddenly Alice became quite exhausted, they stopped, she sat down on the ground, breathing out. Slightly and feel dizzy.
The Queen leaned her back against a tree, and said kindly, "Now you can take a break."
Alice looked around her and was surprised and uttered. 'Why in the whole time, it looks like we're just under this tree! Everything has nothing to change! '
'Of course it is,' answered the Queen, 'what else do you want?'
'Yes, in our country,' Alice said while panting, 'you will often go somewhere else – if you run very fast for a long time, as we ran.'
'What a slow country!' The Queen said. 'Now, here, you see, you need to run continuously just to keep you in the same place.
If you want to go somewhere else, then you must run at least twice as fast as that! '
AJAX and Atlas are hot topics at this MIX06 conference, but will we still use them in 5 years? That is not sure.
I am trying my best to learn new technology, but embedding yourself in new technologies is merely that you are running as fast as you can in the same place. To get somewhere else, you have to run twice as fast. This means that you have to learn about topics that will not be outdated within the next 5 years: human factors and software architecture design. And that's exactly what the list of books I recommend you should read. If you haven't read the top 5 books on that list yet, ask yourself – am I too busy to run as fast as I can?