> I don't have that same sense of enthusiasm because for me everything isn't new.
I agree. I think one of the reasons why people in 30s seem to be more "close-minded" to new ideas is because they already have a decade of experience of the (then) fresh new stuff. This is especially true for the IT world.
Let's face it, we are reinventing the wheel in every 5 years. Just look at how frameworks and programming languages go in and out of fashion. You may say "oh man, not again!" when an enthusiastic young programmer tells you how great node.js is - which may be true, but in your open-minded 20s you already learnt Erlang, Twisted, EventMachine and Java NIO for the very same thing.
I'm not yet 30, but I already feel that I am becoming more conservative. I have seen a lot of "hot stuff" come and go, so I try to learn from technologies that seem to persist. Look at C, this old monster: it survived its creator, and for a reason. Now look at YUI or ExtJS: they were so "hot" around 2007, and I haven't even heard them mentioning for a long time. When somebody says that framework/language X is so great and "hot", I am a bit more careful now that 5 years ago: will it be around in 2 years? If not, does it worth even bothering?
Is this closed-mindness or wisdom? Very hard to tell. I am trying to be open-minded in a sense that I try to look and evaluate everything new, but I'm sure that I say "no" to much more things than 5 years before. I wonder how I would see myself in the eye of my 5 year-old younger me.
I agree. I think one of the reasons why people in 30s seem to be more "close-minded" to new ideas is because they already have a decade of experience of the (then) fresh new stuff. This is especially true for the IT world.
Let's face it, we are reinventing the wheel in every 5 years. Just look at how frameworks and programming languages go in and out of fashion. You may say "oh man, not again!" when an enthusiastic young programmer tells you how great node.js is - which may be true, but in your open-minded 20s you already learnt Erlang, Twisted, EventMachine and Java NIO for the very same thing.
I'm not yet 30, but I already feel that I am becoming more conservative. I have seen a lot of "hot stuff" come and go, so I try to learn from technologies that seem to persist. Look at C, this old monster: it survived its creator, and for a reason. Now look at YUI or ExtJS: they were so "hot" around 2007, and I haven't even heard them mentioning for a long time. When somebody says that framework/language X is so great and "hot", I am a bit more careful now that 5 years ago: will it be around in 2 years? If not, does it worth even bothering?
Is this closed-mindness or wisdom? Very hard to tell. I am trying to be open-minded in a sense that I try to look and evaluate everything new, but I'm sure that I say "no" to much more things than 5 years before. I wonder how I would see myself in the eye of my 5 year-old younger me.