Forgetting the Science to Keep Up with Technology

I've spent the morning reading (and blogging), and I've only found that all the things I'm learning are just leading to more questions and the need to learn even more. I feel as if I've been ignoring the some of the higher thought processes of software design just to chase the low-level details of the latest technology.

It started out with reading about "Refuctoring", which led me to wonder why you'd really need a tool to refactor code. Via a short excursion into Netbeans IDE (which I've had on my disk for a while), I landed at Joshua Kerievsky's Refactoring to Patterns Catalog based on the book.

I was still just trying to figure out what could be so complex that it couldn't be done by hand. I recognized some of the ideas in the catalog, while others seemed loftier, but useful if I elevate my code to those stronger designs. I doubt a tool could really introduce most of the more thoughtful patterns.

When I was still studying the mechanisms of J2EE, I read the J2EE Patterns book, but I've realized that much of it went over my head at the time. I need to go back and reread it now that I have a strong basis.

Now it seems I need to step back even further and refresh my knowledge of non-enterprise patterns as well. As I tried to adapt to the less object-oriented EJB interfaces, I abandoned much of the benefits of object-oriented code. I didn't realize that the whole OO system still exists underneath the EJB and behind the servlet. Roller code opened my eyes to this recently as well. I code so simply on the complex J2EE platform, and it's keeping my code from being reusable. I'm tempted to buy this Refactoring to Patterns book, but I still never get around to reading everything in my list.