Excellent comment, I fully agree with what you're saying. My intent was never to suggest "throwing out" previous knowledge but to instead recognize there's always more to learn and to keep building on that. Once you stop learning, the web quickly surpasses you.
I never stopped, and sometimes feel a little overwhelmed... I try to stay abreast of what's going on, even outside of what I'm working with. At least enough to have knowledge of what's on the horizon or in my peripheral...
That said, even with what I'm actively tracking, mostly JavaScript heavy web applications, Node/iojs, ES6/ES2015, ES7/ESNext, BabelJS, React, Riot, Mercury, Angular, etc.; It's a lot to keep up with. Everything gets to be pretty significant very quickly. That doesn't even include advances in .Net (ASP.Net/MVC, core-clr, etc), Java, Python, Go, the list goes on. It's impossible to know every tool. But it is possible to know and understand the concepts behind web applications, which aren't changing quite as quickly. I understand how SPDY/HTTP2/WebSockets and even bits of WebRTC work. If you understand how the pieces fit together, and how to bend them to your will...
If you understand how web applications work, you might be an expert.
If you aren't afraid to look at and consider new tools, you might be an expert.
If you know when to be pragmatic about your software design, you might be an expert.
If you don't loosely apply a software design pattern because it kind of fits, you might be an expert.
There's no absolute, it's just a matter of knowing more than most, and being able to apply it in practice.
Thanks for the feedback. I do see your point as well; even though web languages and design techniques are constantly changing, our end goal is usually the same. However, I still run into too many web "experts" who think they've learned it all and, in my opinion, that's an outlook that will quickly make you obsolete on the web.
This is huge in my opinion. I've noticed the market for labor in my area has changed quite a bit just over the past year and this is primarily about what framework employers expect you to know or be familiar with. This could be extremely frustrating for many people.
Fair enough and thanks for the comment. The point I was trying to illustrate was the pace at which technologies evolve and few are quicker than the web industry. I wholeheartedly agree that the best blacksmiths were constantly improving but it was relatively slow compared to how quickly the web changes (i.e. they didn't have new tools/materials to learn every single day).
What about doctors and lawyers? Their professions change day-to-day, and often at the whim of political leaders. Something as broad as "law" you can't be an expert in, but you can be an expert in patent law or family law or whatever.
That's an interesting point and I suppose if we broke it down and asked can you be an expert in just HTML or CSS, the answer would likely be yes. However, if that's all you knew, you'd have a hard time being hired. The message I was trying to convey is to have a web career, you need to be constantly learn new things all the time.
