I'm in the same boat as the author - been developing software professionally since the 80's, and have navigated my way through a swamp of different platforms and frameworks and languages, oh my!
I'm currently in the state of mind that the true way to stay ahead of things is to keep studying, every week, something new. Yes: every week. I take at least 15% of my work-time and use it for self-enlightenment -whether its learning how to put the LuaVM somewhere, tinkering with RethinkDB, sharding my mongo's, or whatever. Constant change is the only constant in this industry; one must change oneself, constantly, to catch up.
This isn't so easy to do if you're not into enlightenment, alas.
I'm currently in the state of mind that the true way to stay ahead of things is to keep studying, every week, something new. Yes: every week. I take at least 15% of my work-time and use it for self-enlightenment -whether its learning how to put the LuaVM somewhere, tinkering with RethinkDB, sharding my mongo's, or whatever. Constant change is the only constant in this industry; one must change oneself, constantly, to catch up.
This isn't so easy to do if you're not into enlightenment, alas.