Hosk, thanks for this thought-provoking article. I'm not sure how it eluded my attention for 3 weeks. It certainly provoked my thoughts when I read it.

I began developing software in 1972 and I've seen a lot of change in the almost 50 years since then. Your article provoked me into thinking more deeply about the industry's and my own personal response to change. Here's what I found in that dusty attic that serves me as a brain. (I think that I'm not too different from a lot of developers, just older.)

1) I've always been driven by the desire to build good software, not to make money by using the "in" technologies. Fortunately for me, building good software brought the money.

2) My first reaction to a shiny new thing is to ask if it can help me build better stuff faster. Not to worry about how hard it might be to learn. Learning is fun and the more you do of it the easier it gets (even at 75).

3) My second reaction, if it looks useful, is to learn enough about it to see if it's real or just more hype. Sometimes I've been wrong in my judgement, but mostly my hype sniffer has been right.

4) If it passes my sniff test, on my own time I'll learn enough to try it out at home in a little personal project (drives my wife nuts). I have hundreds of books purchased for the purpose. Online publications have probably saved my marriage.

5) If the new thing passes all my tests, I'll pitch it at work. A couple of times I've been motivated enough to start my own company. Fortunately, I've been lucky with that too.

All that being said, hype is always a danger and too many worthless or dangerous fads have taken hold in the industry (the paint-by-number pseudo Agile methodologies, that have turned development into a hamster wheel for developers, come to mind). That's when I resist change. It's kind of subjective. I wrote a Medium article on the topic a while back if you're interested.

https://medium.com/swlh/on-being-a-professional-software-engineer-54f162459fdc