There are a plethora of frameworks available for developing awesome things on the web. Every one of us have our go-to technology, framework, language, and cms that we like. We like them because we feel comfortable with them and we feel productive using them. However, if you keep and open mind and stay technology agnostic, I promise you’ll be a more effective developer.
I started my career in the web when in junior high school working for local businesses using old-school Microsoft ASP 3.0 and SQL Server. For the longest time that is all I used, even on my own pet projects. I was comfortable there. Once I left it was hard for a poor college student to afford Microsoft technology and I turned my focus to LAMP and was amazed to see what I was missing! This was the beginning of my technology agnosticism.
I spent a long time in LAMP until I ended up at a job that required me to learn ColdFusion. When I interviewed I had never heard of ColdFusion. I hoped that if I focused the interview on my problem solving skills rather than what frameworks I knew I would be in a better position than the other candidates. It turns out I was right and I spent the next seven years becoming an expert in ColdFusion. In addition, during my tenure there I was given the freedom to explore other technology. By the time I left I added PHP, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Apache, Nginx and many other pieces of technology to my toolbelt. My open mind and thirst for knowledge paid off.
Every problem has a solution. Every solution requires a tool to solve it. However, if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. There is no silver bullet in technology and the sooner we embrace that fact the better developers we will become. My advice: keep a beginner’s mind, learn all you can, and most importantly enjoy the ride!
