The always divisive David provides an entertaining look at why people are averse to loss as they progress in their careers. He also talks about the illusionary ceilings for education and questions us to think about why we continue to cling to our existing body of knowledge around software, or any topic that is accumulated through years of experience.
I encounter this often, whether talking about continuous delivery, agile development processes, minimalism in tooling, Microsoft’s shift to open technologies on the client, or open source technology use in enterprises. He starts off with some mention of technologies specific to rails, but bear with it as he then leads into the meat of the conversation which is applicable to anyone, and the real gem in the keynote. I’d recommend anyone watch this, especially folks who have decided that certain technologies are not useful – you are the subject of the conversation and may learn some things from it.
David Heinemeier Hansson’s Keynote “Progress” at RailsConf 2012 in Austin, Texas