My professional career started in 1992. Since then, there have been a lot of hyped technologies, but I only really have acted on very few of them. Most of them, I let go by without taking much action.

I only took big career bets on the web and smart phones. Before I learned how to program for them, I used them every day. Then, I taught myself how to develop for them and changed jobs to do it full-time. In both cases, going from a place where I was very comfortable to a startup.

I passed on nearly everything else: social media, web3, blockchain, big data, ML, functional programming, NoSQL, cloud infrastructure, VR/AR—I know them “enough”, but they were not big factors in my career. Partly it was because I was still benefitting from being an expert, but mostly because I wasn’t personally excited by them as a user or as a software product maker.

I’m thinking about this, because we’re in an LLM hype cycle now. I use products based on it nearly every day. I feel like I did when I used the web and smart phones. I’m getting a lot of value and I want to know how to make things for it.