Have you ever burned your hands by some new and immature technology?

Question

I often hear people saying you shouldn\'t rush into adopting new technologies until they have become stable, tried and tested. There is even a joke on how it takes 3 versions to

Answer 1

I could count many of them. The one that still hurts when I think about it is WLPI (an old BEA workflow product). Never worked out and the vendor abandoned it. Sigh ...

Anyway, I would say keeping up with the latest (knowing what is there, considering it) is very worthwhile, but only live on the cutting edge if:

1. You are prepared to get cut and bleed (money/time/resources)
2. It provides an important strategic advantage/competitiveness.

A good example for this is AJAX. It is now mature enough that every new website should be doing it unless they have a compelling reason not to, but when it was first becoming possible, a website built on it would have been very expensive compared to the traditional alternative.

Some websites need the latest look and feel to stay competitive, even to the point where the features of the site themselves are secondary and they needed to be AJAX early adapters. Others do not. Know who which one you are and act accordingly.