I've been relearning <s>programming</s> Java and trying out the Play! framework, and a slashdot/HN clone is to be my first project of substance. I want a few more features, sure, but man... way to make me feel slow.
/Honestly, learning the ins and outs of a web framework of Rails caliber is very time-consuming.
The difficulty of programming depends a lot on your tools. I haven't used Play!, but I've had more experience with Java, Java frameworks, and Java libraries than is healthy. They tend to make programming a lot harder than it should be.
Every year this phenomenon that you identified gets worse, and the rate of that change is getting worse, too. Don't be too hard on yourself, though. Just finish something, and keep going. Because it'd be even slower if you tried to keep 100% "current" on all the new ideas, because then you'd never finish anything at all. And how slow would that be? Don't sweat it. Work hard, do your best.
But in general the days of big mega frameworks seem to be numbered, and nimble micro-frameworks is the way of the future. Or at very least it's a very powerful fad right now. Play! is a great thing to be working with.
I've been relearning <s>programming</s> Java and trying out the Play! framework, and a slashdot/HN clone is to be my first project of substance. I want a few more features, sure, but man... way to make me feel slow.
/Honestly, learning the ins and outs of a web framework of Rails caliber is very time-consuming.