Hi Hank,

That sounds like a very cool gig, looking into the future. What exactly is it that Professional Systems Plus does? Is it sort of the McKinsey or Gartner of software development?

I just tried to look 3 to 5 years down the road. It was fuzzy. Which I like. I enjoy not necessarily knowing what the future holds. The classic interview question "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" is either a trick question or a clueless one IMO. None of us knows and those of us who claim to are either gaming the system in interviews, which I sort of forgive, or kidding themselves.

Mike


>Hi Mike,
>
>I'm paid to, among other things, look 3 to 5 years down the road, to guide technological choices.
>
>When VFP.Net died (which turns out to have been a good thing in terms of going in a helpful direction) things got a little wild. And then the iPad storm hit: this was market-changing, in terms of where/how apps must run. From that point on it's been a matter of picking which tools/frameworks, in terms of tools that fit the market need, not what kind of tools/frameworks they should be.
>
>Hank
>
>>>>>280North, Cappuccino, Objective-J, Cocoa, and OSX. Do I need to give up sleep to stay current these days? ;-)
>>>
>>>Sounds to me like being on a US highway drinking hot and cold caffeinated beverages and driving some sort of small Honda vehicle, while jet lagged.
>>>
>>>Did I get them all correct? ;-)
>>
>>Yes, exactly. I guess I'm more up to date on this newfangled stuff than I thought!
>>
>>More seriously, at this point in my career I choose my battles. In recent years I have invested significant learning time in .NET, C#, and ASP.NET (lately ASP.NET MVC). None of us really knows the future in an industry where technology is churning so rapidly but my bet is these will be viable skills for some time to come. So I am focusing on them. Will be doing some work with them soon on one of those rare (!) projects rewriting a FoxPro app in .NET. When Claudio Lassala said here recently that he has made a near-total switch from .NET to Ruby on Rails, that got my attention, and I will probably try to learn at least a little about Ruby. But I can't be chasing after every new thing like a puppy surrounded by young children. (That was not a shot at Hank; he may just be better at keeping up than I am).