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Hi Steven,
For as long as human history permits it, questions like this pop up every now and then (more every than then), but the subject never fails to attract attention. I wouldn't go for *any* language to say you can use your skills for the next 5-10 years. If I look back at my short career in IT I have started out with C++ and VB (odd combination, I know), learned COBOL after the fact, learned XML, dis-learned it, learned it again the right way. Learned assembler, I needed it, but everybody told me it was "dead" (this was in 2002!). Learned Java from 1995, learned Rebol and learned Perl. I got hooked on Eiffel, and still am. I got hooked on XML again, but now for washing machines: SOAP. I learned SVG the hard way. Back to C#. Then I needed Fortran.... now I use Python and Ruby for testing, tomorrow I start with K, J and Haskell. Shall I go on? I won't say that I am equally as skilled in every one of them. But my point is that from all these languages I learned, most of them, if not all, are of use to me daily or sometimes weekly. I think it is not a good thing to focus on one technique, tool, language, it will narrow your focus and it will bias your thoughts too much when you have to choose a technique for a certain project. I believe it is better to be open-minded about both emerging technologies and older standards. Some say LaTeX is dead, but look around and you see a lively community. I use it for fine-grained presentation of papers and it still out-performs any XSL-FO when it comes to layout (but maybe the comparison is not fair). XSLT is *not* the "next big thing", nor will it never be. It is niche language, it is designed for a very specific domain: transformation of data from one format in another. That you can solve math puzzles with it is nice, but you can choose any language to do so (some are just better at it). It's main task is and will be transforming data. If you find yourself the next 5 -10 years doing data transformations (it can be fun, but don't tell it the girl next-door or at the bar!), you may find a good friend in XSLT. The language won't quickly be replaced (it is there already for almost 10 years and a very great amount of tools natively support it) and the skills for it won't quickly loose there value. But if you compare it to other hot-shot languages, you are out of luck, it is not even in the top 20, and it is not likely to ever get there: http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm (check lua and ruby, they are going up fast!). Getting familiar with a new technique or tool every three months and learning a new language or technology at least once but better twice a year will give your job chances a much greater boost than betting on any one language alone: Andrew Hunt, Pragmatic Programmer, page 12. I like to close with a quote from Benjamin Franklin:"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest". Cheers, -- Abel Braaksma Steven Janoff wrote: Hi,
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