Choose Shipping Over Using the Latest Shiny Framework

Then why aren't you using Cobol (I assume you're not) :-)

Seriously it is probably a good idea to look a little at new things and possibly try one out and later switch every few years. I could be after 5 years or after 10 years but you can probably find things that helps a lot with some projects. Regarding the unknown one might want to differentieate between things you don't know and things almost no one knows about (ie very new things), the latter aren't really battle tested yet but the former might be.

I think you should have a timeframe. It's ok to try a new framework or language after a couple of years, otherwise you will be stuck on something old. That doesn't mean you must use the newest js framework at all times (probably impossible). You might also start a project where your current framework+langauge is a bad match and then it might be time to try something new. Just budget a lot of learning time for it.

"Shipping" vs. "Using the Latest Shiny Framework" is a false dichotomy whichever way you look at it.

Agreed, but it can be balanced. Dedicate 1h/d to learning, no more. Balance that 1h w/ new vs current tech. Some technologies really _are_ a major investment; while others are smaller improvements than is worth sacrificing your expertise, as you pointed out.

I've had "1h learning" as a daily task for many years now, it's how I transitioned from PHP to Node. Shiny and hot, yes, but more importantly it's one language across all the work I do, and that saves me _tremendous_ amounts of time from when I was on PHP. That was a worth-while investment. Now I'm using Angular while React is getting hot. I'm not convinced that'll boost my productivity substantially, but I have that 1h/d to learn so why not? If it turns out to slow down my productivity compared to my Angular expertise, then I'll veer that 1h/d towards something else instead (VR + Unity is sounding super interesting, or maybe I'll explore this functional programming stuff everyone's raving about).

Yup. Developers writing about small performance differences between JavaScript frameworks, or the antics of this language over that one. It's gotten to the point where people are actually choosing friends and enemies over what framework they use, what programming language they prefer, or what tools they like.

It's becoming a bit counterproductive. I wrote a post about this because of how often I've come across it that's worth reading: http://room4debate.com/debate/tech-stacks-frameworks-languag....