GALACTICA

I work in IT and you nailed it. A lot of the young guys disagreeing with you are going to find out later in life how "tired" they are of learning the nuances of the latest programming language while the new young guys are running circles around them and earning the same or more pay.
 

I switched from practicing law to SEO and SEM. I have picked up html, php, xml and quite a few other languages. I have a knack for learning and love it.

It is not the same as software development by any means but those who fail to continuing learning or developing skillz will fall behind in pay.

Happens in any industry.
 

SS, the issue isn't just learning new things, it's the pace of the change. For example, I can think of about 5 major shifts in web development over a 12 year period. That is simply insane. Very few people have the drive to constantly relearn things at that rate.

Also, it is about some sense of accomplishment. The people who worked on the Empire State building had something to point to all of their lives. I have some mainframe code that still runs at a Fortune 500 company after 15 years. Today, you're lucky if your code lasts 3 years. There isn't much joy to doing something that is obsolete sometimes before you are finished.

Too much of today's technology change is just for the sake of change. I believe XML is a perfect example. XML has a nice niche where it fits well. However, most of its use was and still is handled better by a simple flat file.
 

When I first learned how to create useful programs with the tools there was a sense of accomplishment.

But there is no sense of accomplishment having the re-learn how to do what I already knew just because they changed the tools.

This isn't real learning, it's bogus fake learning forced on me by Microsoft, Sun, or a bunch of open source geeks.