Shiny Object Syndrome: Code Edition

Imagine a little kid going to a toy store. This kid has a ton of options to choose from, and let's forget about the budget for the desired toy. He will roam around the store to find the most exciting thing to play with. He will find one cool Superman toy and quickly grab it. While going back to the counter to finalise the purchase, he would see an RC car. Now, this would be a more exciting choice for him as this is something he has probably never tried before. So, he picks the RC car instead. While moving towards the counter, he finds an RC drone, picks it up and drops the car. Similarly, he gets attracted to many things along the way. The store closes, and the kid turns out not to have made a choice and has nothing in hand while leaving the store.

Do you see the problem here? I see it clearly. The kid had no budget constraint, so he decided to use this opportunity ideally and get the best toy he could enjoy. But he ran out of time and had to go back home empty-handed. He was attracted to every other toy and couldn't make a conclusive decision.

This is called the shiny object syndrome, and it's not just limited to kids or general topics. It also happens in code and a lot more often than you think. This article will examine how a passionate developer gets caught in the shiny object syndrome, how it keeps getting worse and the steps they can take to overcome and escape it.

In code? How exactly?

Developers in this modern era (including myself) often get caught in this. Shiny object syndrome might not necessarily be bad, but for a particular group of developers, it absolutely is, and we will talk about it in this section.

In this modern era, where information is abundant and accessible to developers, we have many choices around us. While scrolling through Tech Twitter (or Tech X), we are bombarded with the latest and greatest news in your favourite field of programming. Especially, if you are a JavaScript developer, you know what I mean.

Everyday, you might find a new framework launching, different people talking about how the framework of their choice is better than the other framework, how is going scratch much better than a framework & vice versa. Then there are feature releases in the newest frameworks that seem like "the thing" which attracts you towards it.

Not targetting anyone, but for example, the Next.js app router is one such case. It's something exciting, somewhat new, so developers naturally get attracted towards all these new things and start to get their hands dirty. Then there are other features that the team keeps putting out that keep attracting you towards them. Then there are other frameworks doing their own innovation and again, you get attracted to them. For someone who is well-versed with programming and knows what he/she is doing, this could be beneficial for them as they get to learn new things regularly, and it's often said that in tech, staying up to date is the key.

But then, there are beginners who also get inside this loop and keep changing their mind about what they want to learn. For beginners, the loop could also be the question of "which programming language to learn?", which they will never figure out as they would keep comparing between the language instead of picking one and learning it. At the end, it's just a waste of time and there's nothing productive the beginner does.

I believe that for a beginner (who is currently not familiar with ANY technology), the priority should be to learn a technology, understand the fundamentals, and then move on to the newest stuff and reason themselves whether the new features are for them or not.

Most of the time, the beginner undergoing this process doesn't even know he/she is trapped under this syndrome, and that's the worst part.

Root cause and why is it unavoidable?

Believe it or not, the root cause of this "shiny object syndrome" is innovation. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who believe that innovation is the root of all evil. In fact, I'm pro-innovation. I think that this syndrome is some kind of side effect of innovation which we cannot escape unconsciously.

If innovation stops, the world stops developing, and it's definitely not the best state to be in. Innovation improves things. That leaves us in a very tough spot because we cannot eliminate the things that cause the shiny object syndrome.

However, there are measures to delay the syndrome (if you are a beginner) and get your fundamentals cleared before jumping onto the next big thing.

The solution

Here are a few things you could do if you are a beginner (or someone who feels distracted while learning to code) to avoid the shiny object syndrome somewhat:

• If you are a complete beginner, make sure you create a curriculum in place before jumping to learn. I usually oppose the idea of picking a set curriculum. I could be called a hypocrite here for that. However, I think you should "create" your own curriculum and stick to it if you have issues with committing to some technology during your learning process. Make sure you build projects, too, as these bring you to test your skills.

• Social media cannot be ignored if you're a developer. You will keep seeing new stuff, especially on X. The chances of you giving in to the latest & exciting things you see are very high. You can't really blame yourself for trying to learn something new, can you? I think there's one way- giving yourself a set time to learn all the newest innovations. I think I'd go with 2:1 when dividing time between learning something that would clear your fundamentals (something you'd want to learn long term) and something new you want to learn.

• Don't be too optimistic about new tech: as much as I understand your urge to get on the ship of learning and using the latest, it's not the best decision because a lot of the times the technology ends up being redundant or not-that-useful. I look at three things before picking up a new thing- the community backing up the technology, any future use-cases specific to the technology and the current age of the technology. If something just launched, I might wait for a few people to get on if the previous two factors turn out to be a negative outcome.

I think these three points could help you avoid shiny object syndrome. Again, it's almost impossible to escape the loop caused by this syndrome if you are a particularly passionate developer.

Conclusion

In this article we saw how the shiny object syndrome plays out for developers passionate about code and the steps they could potentially take to avoid getting trapped in a loop where they learn nothing.

If you would like to add two cents to this article, feel free to comment below. By the way, I also run my own YouTube channel, so if you want coding tutorials mainly in the web development space, make sure you subscribe me there!

Have a nice day, everyone!