Stuck In My Ways

I realized today that when it comes to programming, I’m a bit like a stick in the mud.

I remember when I first made the jump up to HTML4.01 from whatever cock eyed layout we were using back then. Then came learning CSS and I struggled but adapted.

I quickly forgot all the Perl I knew as soon as I found PHP. Then I just stopped.

I’m great when it comes to PHP, MySQL, HTML, and Javascript – it’s the new stuff that I’ve been reluctant to learn.

Give me a web server and the first thing I do is install cPanel and webalizer – even though they’re both very outdated. Even the tools I use are a bit outdated – opting for editplus and wsftp still.

The world is changing, people are using Ruby and postgresql now. Xhtml and Jquery have replaced html and regular old javascript. But I haven’t updated my ways.

To be honest, I just haven’t had the time. I still get to choose the structure of any site I work on, and it’s just way more productive for me to keep going LAMP than to learn something else.

What about you? What made you finally learn and use a new technology? Did you do it on your own or did you do it as part of your job? What are the trade offs of productivity vs learning a new language?

September 16th, 2008