Keeping Up With Technology

I do lots of job interviews and one of my favorite questions to ask is “How do you keep up with technology?“. The answers I usually get fall into three buckets:

“I read lots of blogs and news”

Given the pace of change in our industry, having a good blogroll is vital to keeping up with it. The trick is knowing who to follow. I personally prefer a combination of blogs from communities (Slashdot, Elegant Code, Los Techies) and industry thought leaders (Martin Fowler, Scott Guthrie, Oren Eini). In addition to that, there are some company blogs I find worthwhile (Object Mentor, Google Testing, ThoughtWorks).

“I read technical books”

Nothing gives you an in-depth understanding of a technology or a concept like reading a good book on the subject. Even though technology books tend to get stale (with notable exceptions), blog posts are just not a substitute for for good old-fashioned fancy book learning. On a related note, one of the reasons I like Safari Books Online so much is because its subscription-based model is a very cost effective way of dealing with technology book stale-ness.

“I download new stuff and try it out”

I like this answer for two reasons. First, hands-on learning generates more grokable learnings and a-ha moments than anything else. Second, playing with new technology on your own time/dime means you have a passion for it. And passion is a very desirable quality in a geek.

The perfect mix

Ideally, I’d like to hear all three mentioned. That’ll tell me that you know how to keep up, know when to dig deeper, and like getting your hands dirty. If all you do is read blogs, you get lots of superficial knowledge, but nothing substantial to hang your hat on. Similarly, if you’re only reading books, you may be leaving out bleeding edge stuff (of which there is plenty). And of course, you won’t really understand a technology until you’ve “used it in anger” as they say.