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As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

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Re: As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

#3
Title is misleading. Not getting excited about a new Next.js version doesn't mean you don't care about new technology. Maybe it just means that you don't feel like reorganizing your code or something. Relatively speaking it's still an incremental upgrade to your approach overall.

I am 45 and stopped caring much about new web frameworks many years ago. It's not that I don't find them interesting or even advantageous in some ways, I just don't feel compelled to bother learning in detail about most of them. Although I usually do look into them enough to get the gist.

You just can't pick up every single new thing. If you try then you won't ever get any real work done.

But some things you really have to take notice of. And this is subjective and usually not one right answer. For me, image and text generation was something I felt compelled to jump into.

A big part of this calculation is also social. If you are looking to pick up contracts or jobs, your choice of technology is important. And often picking up the latest trend will make that easier.

It really depends on the technology and what it offers you. I would say that getting familiar with the OpenAI API provides much more bang for your buck (depending on what you are trying to do) versus upgrading Next.js versions. That's much easier to get excited about.

Re: As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

#4
I have this weird split. I really like to follow CPU and GPU tech, and I enjoy reading about nerdy stuff like consensus algorithms and esoteric programming languages whatnot even though I'll probably never use them.

But "smart" phones and apps? Meh, as long as they work I couldn't care less. Never have.

Re: As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

#7
As I get older, I realize that learning new stuff all the time is a mugs game. 90% of shiny new things will be irrelevant in a few years.

So I'm fairly cautious about what I bother to learn. I'll grudgingly learn new stuff if my work requires it, but mostly I coast on my decision to learn python 15 years ago.

Re: As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

#8
Having grown up in 80s/90s, I also start getting older.

While I don't care for technology like "do X with an app" where I know X can also be done without an app, I do get excited for actual real new tech with substance. LLM's, self driving cars once they truly work, much higher video resolutions than the past, etc...

Re: As I get older, I just don't care about new technology

#9
The truth is, producing new stuff follows the law of diminishing returns in every category. After the point where the diminishing returns is really noticeable, new inventions and research actually becomes harmful and pathological. That includes many academic research fields and most technology today.

In fact, if you add up all the breakthroughs we've accomplished, most of it is just helping us use resources more efficiently so that we use more of them, eating them all up like a virus.

We should have stopped most research and technological invention long ago, and instead focused on sustainability and trying to reach an equilibrium with our natural environment.

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