Forget the Old, We Have the New!

The .NET development community is rife with excitement over the upcoming release of all things 4.0 (ASP.NET, Silverlight, C#, etc), and I cannot argue that technology has certainly made life easier for all of us. The problem is the attitude that the new will fix the problems of the old.

The tools we use certainly help us to be more productive and help to reduce the amount of drudgery of certain coding tasks. Better tools enhance and supplement our development experience, but by themselves do not make better developers. Just as buying a Strat will not imbue you with the power to play like Eric Clapton or eating 12,000 calories a day will not turn you into an Olympic gold medalist, even the best tools in the world will only get you so far. The true value a developer possesses is in the time, effort, energy, and erudition they spend learning their craft, sharpening their skills, and improving themselves.

The deeper our knowledge, the better we will be at riding above the technological changes. We will increase our longevity and durability as professionals. We will be able to decide how to use the technology rather than letting it use us.