When you hear of something new, not too far off your beaten path, take a minute and find out what it is, why people think it's useful, and whether it's "A Good Thing".

You may not need it now; you may never need it, but just make note of it in case you do. And when you converse with others, you'll know what they're talking about. When you come across a problem that it might apply to, you'll dig deeper.

For instance, I don't need Feature_X much in my real-world programming, but when I come across a new idea or implementation, I learn a little bit about it. If I ever had to use or develop something serious with Feature_X, I know something of the fundamentals, the keywords, the basic relationships. I'm not afraid of Feature_X. And by knowing something about it, and not being afraid of it, I can make reasonable choices about whether and how to use it, depending on the problem.

But BehindTheCurve never took the time to understand it. When s/he came upon a use for it, well, you can imagine the tearing of hair and grinding of teeth that occurred. Mostly unnecessarily, too. Because newer Perls and newer modules can do wonderful things with Feature_X, that BehindTheCurve won't be aware of, or even know where to look.

Of course, no one can keep up with everything new -- it's accelerating exponentially (somewhat driven by Big Marketing, but also by more people communicating more freely, and just being creative and inventive like they always were). That's why I suggest limiting your excursions into new areas based on proximity to your current experience. If you don't have time for anything, then I might convince you to take time for something paralleling your work and experience. Trying to convince you to see Antarctica when you don't have time to leave your neighborhood is perhaps a waste of both of our times.

To answer your other question, I often feel like I'm missing out on new developments. But if I do just a little bit of catching up, that feeling goes away, at least for a time.

I recently followed my own advice, and learned a bit about Prolog from Ovid recently. It expanded my horizons by making me think outside of the Perl idiom, and about different ways to state problems and ask questions. And I can now write Prolog in Perl if I want. Hopefully just one of my many excursions to come in the future.