Keeping up with technology

It can sometimes be frightening how quickly the IT world changes. Almost every week something is released that promises to be the “next big thing” that will “revolutionise the way we develop applications”. A lot of my colleagues populate their “learn next” list by reading Twitter, but personally this approach doesn’t work for me as I don’t scroll through my feed very often, and when I do I’m not usually in a good place to start reading more about a new technology and delving into a “Hello World”.

Instead, a colleague recommended the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar. It’s updated about twice and year and suggests Techniques, Tools, Platforms and Languages & Frameworks to look into.

For me it was quite intimidating at first when I realised I didn’t recognise most of the things on the list, but even just finding out what each thing is can be extremely helpful when solving everyday IT problems. Not only that, but it solves the difficult problem of knowing which horses to back. There simply isn’t time to learn about every new bell and whistle on the market, but the Technology Radar helps by suggesting which tools to trial.

Thanks ThoughtWorks!