[ha1zum]

I would simplify the problem as choosing between a boring but proven approach to things and a more innovative and exciting one that has a bit more risk. Like most things in life, I would try to balance it. Because I don't have the kind of stress resistance and energy that's required to go 100% on the more risky stuff all the time, but at the same time living 100% on the other side could be unbearably boring after some time.

At my day job I work as a Java+Angular developer on an enterprise software, but if there's a chance to do a small freelance gig on the side, or my personal projects, I'd take it as an opportunity to try out the "hip" stuff just to learn what's good about it and if I like it or not (most recently Nuxt.js).

Also the older, more stable tech are still getting cool updates too but at a much more slower rate, and very often adopted from the newer languages/frameworks. So if I've played with the newer stuff too, I would know what the update is about and have a much easier time getting used to it.

[nikolasn]

Yeah it seems finding a balance between new stuff and old is a good approach. That’s a good point about languages being inspired and adopting features from others. I have personally noticed in my limited experience that learning new languages/frameworks have broadened my perspective as a developer. For example, through JavaScript I found about .map(), .forEach(), .reduce(), and so on. Go taught me dynamic arrays (slices). Then I noticed Java also has functional concepts, and dynamic arrays (ArrayList). C++ taught me the zero-overhead principle and I realized functions such as .map() and .forEach() in JavaScript have significant overhead.