[ahtu123]

>I spent years flailing within technology. I learned the wrong things, dove deep into the wrong technology (Java Swing :|) and made obvious mistakes. In retrospect, I would have paid to work for a capable mentor when I started who could have validated my work and guided my efforts.

I think this is inevitable. We're lucky to be living during a time that has been extremely fruitful and revolutionary in programming languages and technologies. I spent many years on Flash and Silverlight but I don't regret it. Most of those skills transfer to other domains easily.

> Mentor-

Yes. Even after 10 years in the industry I feel like I'd love to have someone to poke me in the right direction every now and then.

[always_good]

Also, using technologies I ended up hating and/or experiencing the limits/downsides of is what compelled me into new, wildly different ones.

I think stagnating is the danger, not learning the "wrong" things. The latter is an important part of gaining perspective.

[ahtu123]

Having experienced so many platforms with 0% thought put into how does this work on more than one platform certainly gives me a huge appreciation of stacks that are built multiplatform from the start. I don't see myself jumping deep into any tightly-coupled-to-one-machine tools anymore for example.