Specializing In A Technology That Will Change In 1-2 Years

Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
So I got a question about specializing in a technology that will drastically change
in 1-2 years.
What technology isn't going to drastically change in 1-2 years?
That's what I want to know.
Anyway, the question is, "Is it a bad idea to specialize in a niche that could be on
it's way out/drastically change in the next year or two?
I love Wordpress, and I would like to be a Wordpress developer and develop both themes
and plugins from scratch.
I know it's likely that Wordpress will be using less php and much more JS going forward.
Is it a bad idea to try and learn/specialize in this now when it will likely change a lot
soon?
(I feel it's a bit different than a new version of the language because it's likely to be
a completely different language altogether)."
This is sort of one of those _____ [inaudible 00:01:06] problems.
This is one of those reasons why I say—I've talked about this a lot.
I won't rehash it too much, but I always say that you should not like learn things just
to have them in your toolbelt because technology changes rapidly.
The reason why is because it could change out from underneath you and then when you're
ready to go, use that hammer all of a sudden, the shaft is all rotted out and it just breaks
in half because you waited too long.
You didn't keep it up to date and you weren't actually using it.
I don't know if that actually happens with hammers.
I've never had that happen with a hammer but I'm sure it could.
Anyway, the thing is this, I wouldn't worry—if you're going to actually use Wordpress development,
if you're actually going to become a Wordpress developer you're going to go with the flow.
Technology is going to change.
You cannot stop it.
You cannot just say, "Okay, I'm freezing in time" or "I'm going to find some stable technology
that's never going to change."
Maybe there's something—I mean, okay, if you want to be a COBOL developer, you can
go back and you can learn COBOL and it's not going to change, but is it really not going
to change?
Because is the way that people use it today in mainframes and some of the bigger systems,
is that not going to change?
Or are you going to work on some system, some mainframe system that's going to be eventually
they're going to phase out the COBOL, right?
What I'm saying is that it's not a good idea to look for safety and security.
That's a really bad idea.
I was just talking about a book that I did a review on called Antifragile.
Check out this book, really good book.
The whole concept is about being antifragile which is the opposite of fragile.
That means that to be antifragile is not to be robust, but it means that you're not just
resilient to changes but you gain from them, so you want to be antifragile.
You don't want to build up security around trying to just be as safe as possible and
then what's going to happen if you do that is that as soon as someone throws a rock at
your glass tower it's all going to shatter and you're screwed.
What you want to do is you want to be able to roll with the punches.
You want the volatility in the technology field and programming field to make you more
valuable, to make it better.
You want to be the kind—how do you do that?
You become the kind of person that can learn rapidly, that can I do what I call "Just in
time" learning that can rapidly develop a new skill set if they need to.
If you want to become a Wordpress developer go for it, but stay up to date, stay up with
the blogs, write your own blog.
If you want to create a blog check out my free blogging course.
Check that out here and sign up.
Stay up to date.
Be on top of the new changes, the new technologies that are coming out so that while there's—you're
going to have these other Wordpress developers that are all stuck in PHP, let's say that
it becomes more JavaScript, so they're stuck there but you're always on the cutting edge,
you're always on the bleeding edge, you're staying up to date and so now the more changes
that get introduced in the Wordpress ecosystem, the more the technology moves forward and
changes the more advantageous it is to you, because those other people can't catch up
so you have less competition.
You actually want wild changes.
You actually want the langue to change.
You want the people that are stuck and can only do PHP and will not learn anything else
and do it all the old-school way, you want them to die off.
You want them to not be able to keep up with the changes while you are.
Again, this doesn’t just apply to just WordPress.
It applies to whatever technology.
That's the key being antifragile, not trying to look for the safe and secure job and all
that.
Instead, look at how can you be as adaptable as possible, how can—when technology change,
how can that be an advantage to you?
There are some people that I know that do this intrinsically.
There are several developers that I know that whatever is coming out, whatever is on their
horizon, they're the first ones on that.
When Swift was coming out in iOS, bam, they were writing Swift code.
They were writing blogposts about it and they were writing books about it, okay?
When Windows 10 was coming out, they were writing the Windows 10 book.
They were doing tutorials on it before it was even shipped.
They were constantly—they were so good at learning quickly and that they were constantly
on top of technology.
When VR came out they were on top of that they had this huge advantage that the more
disruptive things were, the more technology changed the more that they benefited because
everyone else couldn't keep up, but they could.
Now, you're not going to be able to keep up in multiple areas doing that, but if you pick
one like Wordpress then go for it, man.
It doesn't matter if it's Wordpress or whatever it is as long as you're going to stay on top
of that and you're going to ride that bull, okay, and not get thrown off, ride that mechanical
bull, that's great, go for it and you're going to have a huge advantage.
You will actually become antifragile which is really what yo want to do.
So many people are so damn focused on—it used to be me, on trying to be secure and
try to not let anyone rock their boat or disturb their egg carton, right?
Screw that!
That's not good.
You want to be the opposite of that.
You want to be antifragile.
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Specializing In A Technology That Will Change In 1-2 Years

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