[W]hatever I've learned for technologies like Emacs, LaTeX, GNU/Linux, and so forth in the nineties, is still valid and useful to me nowadays. This can not be stressed enough: instead of un-learning and re-learning, I was able to improve and learn new things. This scales much better than any proprietary or temporary knowledge.
Even though I don't use emacs,[1] the point here is one that I've long realised and was instrumental when I was looking at potential directions to go with technology in the early 1990s.
I'd had experience across a number of computer systems, small and large, and all but Unix were proprietary. I'd already seen hard-won knowledge expired, often in a few years, as platforms or tools were eclipsed. And Unix was more fun...
Learning vi on the uni shared-access Unix server in the 1980s was a few weeks of pain and confusion. It's paid off handsomly over the subsequent 35+ years, as did basic fluency in the shell and its tools. Over time I've added to my toolset. Very occasionally old tools are replaced entirely, though quite often replacements themselves seek to retain interface (commands, keystrokes) compatibility.
I've also spent time (and occasionally money) learning proprietary systems ... virtually all of which are not entirely dead to me. Some still exist in small niches, others have all but disappeared.
In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler argues that in the future (that is, now), success will be determined not by those who can learn, but by those who can successfully unlearn old patterns. The older I get, the less likely this seems to be true. Unlearning is vastly more difficult than learning. Far better to get on a technological track in which basic principles, tools, and interfaces are adopted and retained as long as practicably possible, in a modular fashion. This avoids requiring wholesale skills obsolescence, provides for maximal skills retention and accretion, and where unlearning is absolutely required, tends to localise it to specific areas.
Voit's essay touches on several useful concepts directly or by reference (learning, unlearning, knowledge capital). I'd like to add another: the Lindy Effect. That's the tendency of things which have existed for a long time to continue existing. In technology it seems to be largely true. In particular, long-lived free and open tools seem to be good bets for continued relevance.
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Notes:
1. I did pick it up at one point and used it with some facility for a number of months. This was at a time that having ones own Unix or Linux server was still quite a novelty, and my manager at the next gig was an idiot who didn't believe in installing any software which wasn't shipped by the vendor. Life lesson: don't work for idiots, or let them dictate your opportunities.
[W]hatever I've learned for technologies like Emacs, LaTeX, GNU/Linux, and so forth in the nineties, is still valid and useful to me nowadays. This can not be stressed enough: instead of un-learning and re-learning, I was able to improve and learn new things. This scales much better than any proprietary or temporary knowledge.
Even though I don't use emacs,[1] the point here is one that I've long realised and was instrumental when I was looking at potential directions to go with technology in the early 1990s.
I'd had experience across a number of computer systems, small and large, and all but Unix were proprietary. I'd already seen hard-won knowledge expired, often in a few years, as platforms or tools were eclipsed. And Unix was more fun...
Learning vi on the uni shared-access Unix server in the 1980s was a few weeks of pain and confusion. It's paid off handsomly over the subsequent 35+ years, as did basic fluency in the shell and its tools. Over time I've added to my toolset. Very occasionally old tools are replaced entirely, though quite often replacements themselves seek to retain interface (commands, keystrokes) compatibility.
I've also spent time (and occasionally money) learning proprietary systems ... virtually all of which are not entirely dead to me. Some still exist in small niches, others have all but disappeared.
In Future Shock, Alvin Toffler argues that in the future (that is, now), success will be determined not by those who can learn, but by those who can successfully unlearn old patterns. The older I get, the less likely this seems to be true. Unlearning is vastly more difficult than learning. Far better to get on a technological track in which basic principles, tools, and interfaces are adopted and retained as long as practicably possible, in a modular fashion. This avoids requiring wholesale skills obsolescence, provides for maximal skills retention and accretion, and where unlearning is absolutely required, tends to localise it to specific areas.
Voit's essay touches on several useful concepts directly or by reference (learning, unlearning, knowledge capital). I'd like to add another: the Lindy Effect. That's the tendency of things which have existed for a long time to continue existing. In technology it seems to be largely true. In particular, long-lived free and open tools seem to be good bets for continued relevance.
________________________________
Notes:
1. I did pick it up at one point and used it with some facility for a number of months. This was at a time that having ones own Unix or Linux server was still quite a novelty, and my manager at the next gig was an idiot who didn't believe in installing any software which wasn't shipped by the vendor. Life lesson: don't work for idiots, or let them dictate your opportunities.