Does Tech Knowledge Really Last Long?
Does Tech Knowledge Really Last Long?
Here is one question we do not frequently ask when we are in the field of technology which is How soon before the things we know today become useless to us tomorrow?
There is what is known in science as the half-life of knowledge, the amount of time that half of what we know in an area will become obsolete or outdated. In medicine, it can be decades. But in technology? Its half life is extremely brief. It’s between 2 and 3 years in many cases.
Think about like ten years ago,
- Nearly all sites were based on the use of jQuery. Modern applications today are created using React, Vue, or Angular or even Svelte.
- Most teams had used SVN or even zip files containing the code to control the version. At this point, Git has grown to be the standard of the day.
- Stacks on the back-end continue to develop. In less than ten years, we have switched to serverless, microservices, and cloud-native architectures or stacks in place of LAMPs (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).
- And even languages remain such. Python 2 was ubiquitous until recently and it has since disappeared, with Python 3 and later.
But here is the point, all knowledge does not fade away equally. Basic skills, such as algorithms, database design, networking, and problem solving, are not used up in one year or decade. These are your long term investments. Frameworks, libraries, and tools on the other hand are more of a short-term stock that can be useful today but may change tomorrow.
This creates a very serious question in us all which is, What do you personally do to keep your skills up to date in such a dynamic area?
Other developers test out side projects in an attempt to learn new frameworks. There are those that depend on online courses and certifications. Team knowledge-sharing sessions or open-source projects help many sharpen their knowledge. And finally, there is always the old-fashioned technique which is good old trial-and error debugging.
We cannot say there is one correct answer, but we take a risk not to ask the question. When we cease learning, things that we were once proficient in will one day disappear creating gaps to our capacity of giving and adapting. On the other hand, life-long learning, unlearning and relearning keep us significant and future-fit.
So, back to you,
Do you have a continuous learning system?
And how do you balance learning the new shiny toys and reinforcing the old basics?
Technology changes so fast that what we know today might not be useful a few years from now. But I think the fundamentals like problem-solving, logical thinking, and understanding core concepts always stick. For me, it’s all about keeping the basics strong while being open to learning whatever’s new.
Technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that what we use today may not be of use in a few years to come. Still I believe that the basics such as problem solving, thinking logically, and knowing the basics is always retained. In my case, it is everything about maintaining the fundamentals solid and being willing to know whatever is new.
I think tech knowledge doesn’t really last forever because technology keeps changing so fast. What we learn today might be outdated in a few years. But at the same time, I believe the core concepts, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills we gain will always stay useful. So for me, it’s more about keeping the basics strong and being ready to adapt and learn new things as technology evolves.
It is so considerate and stated so eloquently. You have brought about a valuable fact concerning the half-life of knowledge in technology and how fast the very tools we are using today may become irrelevant tomorrow. I particularly found the manner in which you compared short-term knowledge such as frameworks and libraries with long-term basics such as algorithms, networking, and solving problems.