@Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over. said:
I've got news for ya: even if you're 20, you'll always be playing catch-up in the software industry. There's always a new methodology, framework, or language on the horizon. Read the magazines, pick up a few books, and troll the blogs, and you'll do fine.
Agreed. When I get the opportunity to teach newbies the ropes, this is one of the first things I tell them. Anyone who thinks that they'll get a nice cushy IT job that never changes is going to get hit with a big surprise. The key is to focus on the fundamentals...good troubleshooting, logical workthrough of a problem, big-picture thinking, etc... Almost every new buzzword that comes out is a reinvention of something that has been done in the past, this time with new technology toys attached. For example. the latest concepts of on-demand computing have been well laid out in the 70s and 80s, when everyone bought compute-time on monster machines that were not personally owned.
The problem is keeping up with the buzzwords so you can stay employed, even though you know this has been done before.