Andrew Powell

I've been getting a curious response from some of the people I've told about the latest addition to my skill set.  When I tell them that I've taken the dive into Ruby on Rails (RoR), the first question they've asked is "Why would you want to do that?".  Well the answer is quite simple.  Around the middle of the year each year, I make a concerted effort to learn a technology that I'm not familiar with yet.  Last year I got into Spring/Hibernate, Flex was the year before.  This year, I've decided to double my efforts.  This year, I'm committing myself to the dual challenges of learning RoR and Silverlight.

I have long contended that any developer, as long as they have a solid background in a structured language (Java, C++, etc) can easily pick up any other programing language once they get past the rudimentary syntactical differences.  I believe this fact (I learned in C++ back in the day) has allowed me to pick up languages quickly and add to my value as a developer and a consultant.  This foundation has helped me professionally because I have been able to increase my value to my employer, year over year.  It has also helped to keep me sharp as I often find myself switching between 3-4 different languages in a given work day. Without this challenge I'm sure I'd grow complacent and my skills would drop off at some point.

So, am I bragging?  No.  I am challenging you, the complacent developer, to take the time, take the plunge, choose something you don't know but have been wanting to learn and dive into it head on.  It can be Flex, C#, Java, Ruby, PHP, whatever.  Just choose your target and go after it with passion and a desire to make yourself better and make yourself a better developer.