Nice post by Daniel Jalkut on his philosophical change regarding refining his craft:

As a modern software developer, I derive as much joy from remaining relevant as I do from the thrill of identifying and solving the particular problems in my work. To remain relevant, I have to reject my previous assumption that I would spend a lifetime refining my craft. Instead, I will spend a lifetime adapting the techniques of yesterday’s craft to the sometimes radically different challenges of today. I may never become “a real expert,” as I hoped I might be. But by diligently throwing out the old rules and embracing the new ones, I hope to come close.

I would argue that remaining relevant is refining his craft. It is really hard, I think, in the modern coding era to be good at only one thing. Once upon a time I was a very good Palm OS programmer. That skill is completely irrelevant today.

Today I’m a solid iOS, Rails and Javascript programmer. I’ve been programming for almost 30 years and I have never been more relevant and never felt as capable of crafting amazing software products as I do right now.