Like many kids I loved reading. I was probably lucky to grow up before the constant digital gamification of our world, a quiet corner and a the pages of another world made for a happy afternoon. So it was a crushing realization that I could never read all the books in the world. Probably not even all the books in our small local library.

Being a “full stack” engineer often feels that way.

Even more daunting now that I’ve been away from it for a while. I’m doing a technical rotation this year, refreshing my sense of assembling code and being on the front lines of tech. In many ways it’s a refreshing feeling, learning tons of new things feels fresh and exciting.

On the other hand it’s an embarrassment of choices. In 2006 I became highly proficient in MySQL. Barely seems useful in the age of global causal plus consistency. In 2008 I was writing JavaScript unit tests and running layered javascript builds. Thanks to the Dojo framework I was five years ahead of most of the industry. But it means nothing now, a dozen years later it’s a full time job to keep up with the changes in React.

Oh for simpler times!

Just kidding. Better to be awash in the great tech firehose than standing around thirsty. Pass the quantum homomorphic encryption please.