Technical lock
Or cognitive lock is when your so immersed in a technology you struggle to break free from its grasp, you see and use this technology as the solution to every problem.
This is often the case for new developers when they feel they have a good grasp of the programming language they’re using everyday or the database they use or OOP paradigms.
Sticking with the same thing and mastering might be the way to go, there’s still a niche for Fortran developers somewhere, but your narrowing your target for learning and for possibly for jobs, times change and technologies appear and disrupt.
Breaking free of technical lock and learning a new programming language or any new way of doing something will open your eyes to new possibilities and new avenues that may not have been obvious. It will also strengthen your understanding of your existing knowledge, it will help you understand the choices the language designers chose and the things you like and dislike about a language, technical lock can blind you from the things you take for granted.
How many times have you helped a parent or grandparent with technology, maybe this is un-technical lock.
This is also be relevant to businesses, they’re tied into an ecosystem and tools for longer as it usually works and harder to change at scale, I guess that’s what all this digital transformation is about.
They say “the right tool for the job”, but how do you know what the right tool is if you’ve only ever used one tool?
