Robert Harvey nailed this, but after thinking about it, I'm compelled to throw brevity to the wind and answer.
I have to add a disclaimer, I didn't go digging into Perl On Rails the moment that it was announced. I had a feeling that it worked well for the very localized use that it was designed for and made a note of it for future reference.
I also did not succumb to over 50 permutations to the standard C library over the course of the last two decades, I wish I could link to them, but they appear to now be existentially challenged.
Insert a long rant here about believing everything that you read or hear.
When something new comes out, grab it and have a look. If you say 'ick', drop it. If you say 'wow', improve it. If you can't contemplate such a decision, go pick the brains of people who can.
Judge everything on technical merit alone. Worth your time means it saves you time while getting a thumbs up from the majority of your peers.
Now, I'll address your question directly:
Half of everything you know will be obsolete in 18 - 24 months, true or false?
You'll have to let us know in 18 - 24 months. Companies pay substantial sums to get people talking about how great their product is. We have to wade through not only start up companies but established giants that shell out considerable sums of cash to:
- Have [sic]respected bloggers regurgitate a sales pitch to their readers
- Send out expensive branded gratis gear to gain brand placement where it might be noticed through bragging or use
- Pay people to make sure you see a 'working solution' in Google's top 10 when researching a problem
- Pay for 'awards' from the 'top ten directory' sites and pretend those are authoritative
- A veritable plethora of other means to convince people to stop thinking and just follow the crowd
You could, of course, form your own decisions based on previous experience and your trials with something new. While doing that, eschew employers that have managers who hand out commandments based on their RSS reader.
I do, however have this amazing new bridge building library that is smart enough to switch between Brooklyn and London based on your locale. It's going to be huge, do you want to get in on the ground floor?
My answer is indeed intentionally sardonic and perhaps the anti boolean, but really? For exception handling purposes, my answer is a resounding false.
If you think something is technically sound - embrace it, otherwise it's business as usual. C is my primary language, it works just as well as it did nearly two decades ago, while I get paid over twice as well as I did nearly two decades ago.
I admire your concise form and citations, but this does appear to be a breaching experiment.
Well done :)
Statement = (True or False)
Yes.