Inertia, other life priorities, all types of things.
I think one of the things that's hard for people is that thinking along a particular type of technology for people creates a type of mental rut that means subsequent thinking tends to go down the same rut.
By this, I don't mean it so much as the 'stuck in a rut' sense of being unable to escape, but more of the fact that it's hard to approach a problem without using an existing mental pathway you've spent years using.
It's like trying to learn a new (spoken) language - you tend to try and think in your old language and do the conversion, rather than think in the new language. The people who can pick up new languages quickly apparnetly have a good ability to skip over these mental ruts and embrace new types of thinking quickly.
So people struggle initially to understand new technologies because it might require a different type of thinking. And they may also have no chance to practice these skills without leaving their existing job, which might involve a significant cut in income and/or a relocation.
Of course the end-run around this is to be involved in an open source project in the new technology, and try and pick up work through those avenues.
The other issue is that, as a technology gets mature, as long as it is still being used, the dollar rewards tend to go upwards as time goes by. I personally know of guys who still work on database systems written in the 1980s which predate relational databases. They are the only ones who know it, and are pretty much untouchable for both domain and technical knowledge. They get to work from home for large money and are off-limits as far as cutbacks and layoffs. Of course, this all happens up to the point a new system is put in place, but, as the article says, old systems are geographical layers, so businesses can tend to build on top of the old layer and glue it together with middleware, rather than do a bottom-up rebuild.
So if you're making big money doing something you can do with your eyes closed, and are indispensable, there's not a lot of incentive (beyond intellectual curiosity) to switch out into a new stream. The people I know are financially set anyway, and they just see it as a revenue stream that will one day dry up, but are happy to keep taking it while it comes in.
I think one of the things that's hard for people is that thinking along a particular type of technology for people creates a type of mental rut that means subsequent thinking tends to go down the same rut.
By this, I don't mean it so much as the 'stuck in a rut' sense of being unable to escape, but more of the fact that it's hard to approach a problem without using an existing mental pathway you've spent years using.
It's like trying to learn a new (spoken) language - you tend to try and think in your old language and do the conversion, rather than think in the new language. The people who can pick up new languages quickly apparnetly have a good ability to skip over these mental ruts and embrace new types of thinking quickly.
So people struggle initially to understand new technologies because it might require a different type of thinking. And they may also have no chance to practice these skills without leaving their existing job, which might involve a significant cut in income and/or a relocation.
Of course the end-run around this is to be involved in an open source project in the new technology, and try and pick up work through those avenues.
The other issue is that, as a technology gets mature, as long as it is still being used, the dollar rewards tend to go upwards as time goes by. I personally know of guys who still work on database systems written in the 1980s which predate relational databases. They are the only ones who know it, and are pretty much untouchable for both domain and technical knowledge. They get to work from home for large money and are off-limits as far as cutbacks and layoffs. Of course, this all happens up to the point a new system is put in place, but, as the article says, old systems are geographical layers, so businesses can tend to build on top of the old layer and glue it together with middleware, rather than do a bottom-up rebuild.
So if you're making big money doing something you can do with your eyes closed, and are indispensable, there's not a lot of incentive (beyond intellectual curiosity) to switch out into a new stream. The people I know are financially set anyway, and they just see it as a revenue stream that will one day dry up, but are happy to keep taking it while it comes in.