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Are There Too Many Standards?
CyNRG asks: "Lately, I've been reviewing the different programming and protocol standards in an effort to guide my career in the most fun and profitable direction. The proliferation of standards is astounding! Choosing which path to follow is more like a trip to Las Vegas. Standing at the craps table in Ceasar's Palace at 3:00 am: do I play the point? Big 6 or 8? Play the field? How about covering the hard ways? The world is using technology more and more, so I would expect more standards based on that fact. It seems like common knowledge, vis-a-vis Microsoft, that companies try to put forth 'standards' in an roll of the dice to make their 'standard' defacto. Are there too many standards?"
OK, that may not seem like a popular idea, but in the long run, it may be the best path to follow. While it could certainly be argued that there are too many "standards", the important thing is to become proficient with follow the "accepted" ones. You say you are reviewing different standards to help guide your career path. My best advice is to learn the basics, and learn them very well. Learn not only how they work, but how they work together. Yes, you will become more of a generalist, but you will also become proficient at determining how you can develop a solution by applying your knowledge that can best fit the given situation.
Focusing on a specific standard IS a crap shoot. Yes, you could make big bucks by jumping on the latest bandwagon, but it will no doubt be short-lived. Over the long haul, a broader knowledge base is more useful and marketable thatn a highly-focused one.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I get the impression the submitter feels overwhelmed by the volume of standards and wishes his learning curve was less steep.
I think what he doesn't understand is that without the standards there would be multiple non-standard implementations.
To the submitter: Try looking through some established electrical, plumbing, and building codes. Imagine building a house without them. Then maybe you will understand why standards are a good thing.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Three acronyms for ya:
CRLF
CR
LF
We have three major computer platforms, and three different standards for the line terminator in plaintext files.
Of course there are too many standards.
Exactally, the problem isn't too many standards. Standards are a good thing. The problem is too many proposed standards all vying to become the standard. Companies rarely work together on this sort of stuff until it becomes absolutely necessary to do so (i.e. their proposed standards fail).