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blueflowtoday at 1:22 PM1 replyview on HN

Actually yes. I wanted to get into UI programming with GTK 2 and right now im waiting for GTK $n to stabilize so i can commit to it.

Knowing that GTK $n-1 will soon be obsolete is enough reason to not put effort into learning it.


Replies

lo_zamoyskitoday at 9:12 PM

In general, we should focus more on what endures over what changes. Focus less on the times and more on the eternities. People very often drown in the noise of passing fads and fashions and ephemeral tech. Can you become really skilled at using some piece of tech? Sure. Is it worth becoming really skilled? It depends on the circumstances and the particular person, but in most cases, probably not. It usually is a waste of time (but given the kinds of SFVs that people publish or hobbies people have, people are generally quite good at frittering away their lives on stupid shit).

Incidentally, this is how you can distinguish between a good CS curriculum from a bad one. A good one focuses heavily on principles; the particular technical trappings are mostly just a medium, like Latin used to be in academia, now replaced by English. You pick up what you need to do to the job.