Staying on the cutting edge

Question

Being a software developer in todays high paced, high tech environment means constantly learning, sharpening your tools so as not to be left behind. This means assimilating knowledge by all means, books, blogs, user groups... help files ;)

This also presents the challenge of focusing on what is relevant for your current needs (project) and also what is trending and marketable.

.NET Framework, Ruby On Rails,ASP.NET MVC there is alot to learn out there, how do you know it all?? Can you know it all??

So I guess my question is, how does a developer manage to stay current, marketable and on the cutting edge?

Answer 1

Very good question, books, blogs, user groups etc, are also very time consuming and take away from the project...There should be a site for programmers to stay on top of the latest technology, tips, tricks, etc.. ALL on one site...I would like to see some answers on this also....Thanks for posting it

Answer 2

I suspect the answer is 'you don't' -- you keep familiar with a subset of the material as it updates, but you can't remain familiar with everything.

I hope someone out there has a better answer, but even if you forget about having a social life, there is just too much to learn to know 'everything'.