The Red Queen

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Alice Through the Looking Glass

As a software developer – I feel a bit like Alice Through the Looking Glass. It’s not that I dress like a Victorian school child (we’re only allowed to cross dress on a Friday – boooo). It’s that I often seem to be running to stand still. Just mastered ASP.Net 1.0. Here’s 2.0 – to dig through. Just at the top of your stored procedure game. Here’s LINQ to chew on. Really chuffed that you’ve done a fancy windows form with tabs and everything. Well here’s Windows Presentation Layer. And Sliverlight, and the Semantic Web and WAP, and XAML and WCF and and and and ………….

How is it possible to manage? Is it? Should we just abandon all hope? In my humble opinion – if you want to continue to be a software developer you’ve got to do something. Probably quite a few things. Here’s a few

1. Do some certified type exams – Microsoft, Sun et. al.


2. Read a book. Maybe go mad and read two. Jeff Attwood (IT blog hero) comments that’s developers don’t read – easy to fix. Read something.


3. Join a professional society (IEEE, BSC etc..)


4. Volunteer to do a bit of IT outside work


5. Hope that you get to use exciting new technologies in work – or change jobs to one that lets you.
   
6. Step off the escalator altogether And become a manager and spend your time explaining to angry clients exactly why the project is over budget, over schedule, over sized, under performing and over tired.

It’s hard. Running to stand still always is. But it you don’t keep running sadly you won’t keep up. Unfortunately IT isn’t a slow sort of country – it’s a very fast one.

A note: how effective are the above and other things at coping with a fast country? I really think that some a better than others, some are better for some people and some are better a certain career points. And some are probably no good at all. Further musings to follow.