The last couple of weeks, there has been a flurry of “X is dead” blog posts. Have your pick: Java, ORM and a lot of other things have been declared dead. Rest in peace. Pushing up the daisies. There is a new technology on the block now.
The inevitable answers are usually not far behind. X is not dead after all. You insensitive clods. And I happen to think the coffin should be black, thank you.
I wish people would take half a step back. Yes, technologies become outdated. Then they die, or linger on, doomed to a Cobol-esque existence in projects without the funding and need to evolve. Get over it. The new technologies will also become obsolete, I guarantee it. Struts is now uncool. I can remember how nice it seemed when it appeared.
The interesting question is how your project can get rid of “dead” technologies, which usually means technologies that are now “uncool” because the in-crowd are not using them any more. Can you do that in your projects? What technologies can you swap out for something different? How often would you want to do that? What would the costs and the benefits be? How can you reduce the costs of getting a project to become dynamic and less technology-bound?
Ave artis nova, simili artis seneca.