What do you think 1) really is, though? Do you think "keeping up" with 100 different mvc frameworks that do roughly the same thing is "keeping up?" That seems to be what that code phrase is usually used to mean. Are younger programmers not as easily accused of this or worse than not keeping, not knowing enough fundamentals? The whole notion of keeping up with technology change in programming contexts sometimes seem silly to me. Is it really that big of a change that you can start to do with JavaScript web apps what you could do 20 years ago?
You are right, but unfortunately some of the misinformation (or maybe it was like that in the beginning?) about the Google hiring process made it to other companies, so the hiring process focusses on a lot of detailed knowledge about Rails 4 even though you may have a ton of Rails 2 experience and after that you did 5 years of full-time Lift, you might still not get the job because you are not 'current'. I think it's rather a lot of bullshit and actually the reverse is true as well; I see programmers who learned and used a specific thing, like Rails 4 having issues picking up anything else well. Yet people hire them because they 'kept up'. Have fun with that in a few years :)
