A Bad Time To Be A Dinosaur

While I've never considered myself to be a dinosaur, I do believe that if I am not careful, I am in danger of becoming one. You know what I mean - someone who is skill-set, paradigm, mind-set, technologically, or otherwise locked into a time that is quickly fading into history. The rapid advance of web technologies can render one a dinosaur in a blink of an eye. I know. I work with one (or more). It is so frustrating to have to explain and justify using technologies that, in the era in which they are locked, were so bleeding edge that you didn't dare use them. However, now, if they are not commonplace, are in many cases yesterday's methods. I believe it has to be as equally frustrating for them, to be scared to death of video, cascading style sheets and DHTML and heaven forbid Ajax, Flex, Flash and the like. But if I'm honest with myself, I see that what I'm doing with Ajax, DHTML and such are quickly falling laps behind the leaders. One thing I see that I believe protects me from becoming a fossil, if not a dinosaur, is that I at least am knowledgeable of these new technologies, what they do, how they do it and their place in today's web world. But true dinosaurs haven't got a clue how far they are behind. I sit in meetings with those who vehemently resist the use of Flash on a home page, page widths, beyond 540 pixels and have a massive stroke at the mention of video. It really makes me wonder why they still want to work in this environment when they are so very far behind the curve. And the sad fact is, the technologies are changing at an ever increasing rate. It's like a few years ago. The vehicles I drove were either current generation or maybe one body style change away. Nowadays, I see that the vehicles I drive are sometimes three or four generations behind. Today, it would be very easy to fall two or three generations behind in the technologies and methods I am using. It's a bad time to drift into the "dinosaur" mode. Once there, you are almost hopeless. I've not built a Flex application. But I sure know what Flex is, what it does, and know that I want to do things with it, things that would be very valuable to the mission of the department I am in. I'm not a dinosaur - I'm not a dinosaur - I'm not a dinosaur.