A way to catch up to modern programming techniques

Question

I have been programming, non professionally for about 23 years and find I am a little stuck in my ways. I find a tool I like, and it stays that way for year after year. Unfortun

Answer 1

I lot of "new" concepts are not actually new. Most "modern" language features are derived from early functional languages, for example. Techniques such as TDD and Agile are just codifications of things that have been done for a long time, just perhaps not in the mainstream. Nor are they hard to understand per se.

I suspect your biggest obstacles will be terminology. You may be used to hearing buzzwords, but when you look at what they mean you just find them explained in terms of other buzzwords.

My recommendation is to persist. Find your way back to where things are explained in terms you can relate to then work back out. Once you've done that with a few concepts you'll feel a lot more confident in tackling more, and have a better idea of which things you really want to concentrate on.

For language related things this is probably easier because you can go back to, for example, Lisp and find the concepts explained in terms of what was familiar in the 60s and before! (of course you can find more recent coverage too).

For design and process related subjects just reading up on their histories in wikipedia should give you some clues.

Keep your focus narrow enough to not be overwhelmed, but broad enough to take account of the eco-system that a tool or technology exists in.