The volume of small, incremental, changes in law is higher. Let me put it this way. The Dodd-Frank regulations that have come out so far in the last two years is probably the same number of pages, printed 50 lines per page, as the C++ source for Oracle's Hotspot JVM. And it's only 30% done. And there is no ChangeLog.
The pace of paradigm shifts is indeed much faster in technology, but I disagree there are major paradigm shifts in technology every 10 years. There are major developments within specific scientific domains like AI, image recognition, etc, but in software engineering itself there is little new under the sun. There is nothing in Javascript that wasn't done better in Smalltalk 30 years ago. CoffeeScript, C#, Lua, Ruby, etc? Derivative stuff that any Lisp-er plucked out of 1985 could pick up in a week or two.
I feel like a lot of what you're talking about is applicable to languages and technologies in general. Advantageous technological knowledge seems to be more about frameworks and domain-specific experience more than anything else; something that a Lisp-er from the 1980's will have quite a steep learning curve ahead for.
Not disagreeing with your point. Just pointing out something that has been bothering me a bit about the fragmented platform market.
Your field has a guild and you enjoy the benefits of a professional culture that is centuries in the making. Fully agree with your points regarding the comparative rates of change, and, the sad fact (isn't it?) that the lack of deep exposure to the existing body of work in field due to a lack of effective apprenticeship of the non-existant-guild gives rise to the "major paradigm shift" every 10 years.
The pace of paradigm shifts is indeed much faster in technology, but I disagree there are major paradigm shifts in technology every 10 years. There are major developments within specific scientific domains like AI, image recognition, etc, but in software engineering itself there is little new under the sun. There is nothing in Javascript that wasn't done better in Smalltalk 30 years ago. CoffeeScript, C#, Lua, Ruby, etc? Derivative stuff that any Lisp-er plucked out of 1985 could pick up in a week or two.